Category: Exploring Church Ministry Blog

“Holy, Holy Week, Batman!”

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

batman and robin

“Robin, there is something seriously sinister afoot.  It seems the people of Gotham have lost their sense of the story of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.”

“Holy Holy Week, Batman!  It must be the work of that arch-villain the Joker who has turned the narrative of Jesus into a by-gone joke… or maybe the Riddler who has made the redemptive events of Jesus into a complicated riddle that no one can solve… or maybe that fiend, Cat Woman, has finally found the purr-fect way to foil attention to the Lord Jesus.”

“I fear, Boy Wonder, that you have stumbled upon who is behind the loss of Holy Week… they are all conspiring together not just to create a spin on the life and death of Jesus, but to form a new narrative that doesn’t even include Christ at all.”

“Those dastardly demons of disaster!  Let’s go get them, Batman!  How could they have done such an ugly underhanded umbrage as that!?”

“Let’s use the Bat computer to analyze the evidence found at the crime scene churches…. Look, Robin, it seems a feculent film of gross gas has rendered the believers prone to the noxious notion that the Christian observance of Holy Week is optional, as if the journey with Jesus to the cross doesn’t need special attention.  They are attempting to rewrite it all so that Christians will pass through this week without even a thought about Jesus… until it’s too late.  Then they will sweep in and make all of Christianity into something that’s merely an accessory to life, like a petty plastic purse.”

“Holy evisceration, Batman!  They’re trying to do away with the Christian life and the story of Jesus altogether and replace it with their fiendish focus on the foul festering faith of fecund followers!”

“That’s right, Robin.  It’s our job to stop them from following through with their platitudinous plot before it’s too late.”

“But how, Batman?  Their vile villainy has already voiced a vacuous votum of veneered viciousness to any observance of the last week of Christ’s life on this earth.”

“Yes, Robin, but you are forgetting the one “v” word which has already spelled doom for our culprits of crime… “victory.”

“Holy resurrection, Batman!  You’re right!  All we need to do is voice the victory of Jesus and those bungling bandits of belief will get another “v” word: “vanquished!”

“Holy Week and all the major Christian seasons of the Church Year are meant to help us remember Jesus and follow Christ in our daily life.  When strayed souls begin berating believers for observing obedience to Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy (or Black) Saturday, and Easter Sunday then you can bet, Boy Wonder, that the gangsters’ gross gas of gullibility has fumigated their faith.”

“So, you’re saying, Batman, that the forgetting of faith festivals can be reversed through setting our sites on the contempt of the cross and the resplendence of the resurrection?”

“The cross is the mid-point of history, Robin, the very center of faithful followers.  From it flows the flowering of all faith.”

“Holy forgiveness, Batman.  I see it now.  The sin issue has been taken care of once-for-all through the death of Jesus Christ.  And his rising again has enabled us ignorant idiots of ignominy to live a new life of love through the words and ways of Christ.”

“And, don’t forget, Boy Wonder, that we get our faith focused through walking into those ways and words by highlighting holidays as eminently important to our crowded calendars.”

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, creator of heaven and earth; and, Jesus Christ his only Son, our Savior; who, with the Holy Spirit lives and reigns forever and ever!”

“Amen, Boy Wonder.  Amen.”

The Church Playground

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

gra110715_hi

At first glance, when you drive by any school at recess the whole thing looks like a bunch of random kids descending into chaos bordered by a fence to keep it all from spilling out into the streets.  But there’s much more going on than the quick peek tells you.  There are all kinds of petty little groups that make up the playground.  It kind of reminds me of church.

The Presbyterians head outside into recess and can’t believe the lack of order going on.  They try their darnedest to get some organized games happening, but the Baptists aren’t having it.  They’re too far separated from all the other kids to care about playing with any of them.  Besides, nobody is playing by the rules and if there’s one thing Baptists can’t stand is a lack of legalism.  The Pentecostals all seem completely oblivious to anything that’s going on.  They’re just having too much fun going as fast as they can on the merry-go-round to see that the Catholics are totally aghast at their lack of guilt feelings over hogging the equipment.

The little group of Episcopalians are lost in some funky inferiority complex and retreat into their liturgical games while the popular kids, the Non-denominational group, break out singing Chris Tomlin songs so loud that the Methodists go scrambling for their Book of Discipline to see what to do about it.  The Lutheran kids are so busy fighting each other about who is the true Lutheran that they can’t hear the non-denom kids anyway.  And the Reformed are those annoying kids who keep acting like the teacher instead of just enjoying being a kid on the playground.

There are two things about the church playground: the groups of kids don’t play very well together; and, the entire playground thinks it’s the only one in town.  They don’t realize there are other playgrounds with all kinds of other kids.

We live in a big world.  How we interact with that world is going to determine if the school gets shut down, with no more playground.  After all, what parent wants to send their kid to the school where nobody gets along with each other?

What’s more, how we interact with each other on the playground of Christianity says a lot about our view of God.  For far too many groups, God is the high and lofty Principal who’s only seen when something goes wrong, not realizing that he is really the encouraging teacher who’s daily in the classroom offering kind words and self-sacrifice that changes your life forever.

Instead of lamenting that Christendom has vanished from its grand position in society and that the moral fabric of our country is down the toilet along with the janitor’s cigarette butt, maybe we should stop giving the other kid a swirlie long enough to see that our bullying and belligerent ways are anything but the words and ways of Jesus to a world who needs spiritual care, not spiritual abuse.

I’d suggest we use our detention time to think about what we’ve done.

Logical Church Fallacies

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

logical church fallacies

It’s that time of year again.  Winter is nearing its end, the hope of Spring is just around the corner, and the logical church fallacies come out to play.

I learned a long time ago that reason and logic often get thrown under the bus when it comes to church folk and their thinking.  We all have this nasty tendency to make decisions far less on measured logic and a whole lot more from our stubbornness.  Churches typically aren’t known as places of being into dialogue and change, and sometimes they’ll do some mighty tall mental gymnastics to keep things the way they are.

Identifying some erroneous thinking is kind of like my annual Spring cleaning.  So here we go with some of my favorites I’ve heard in the past year….

The Strawman

The reason this logical fallacy is called “The Strawman” is because there are folks who chronically tend to misrepresent, exaggerate, oversimplify, or just downright fabricate another’s viewpoint.  They set up a scarecrow to keep the status quo and oppose alternative views.  If you’ve ever heard some parishioner say something like “the pastor hates the organ; he always has praise songs in the worship service” or “the Sunday School Superintendent is trying to turn us into stark-raving Pentecostals since she doesn’t use the denominational curriculum,” then you’ve got a Strawman running amok in the pews.

The Bandwagon

You likely know this one all too well.  Church folk seem particularly fond of the Bandwagon fallacy.  It’s an appeal to a perceived popularity that is designed to shut down any sort of substantive dialogue.  “Everyone hated that sermon.  Nobody liked what the preacher said,” is meant to tame that crazy firebrand from proclaiming the Word of God as he/she sees it.  If we were at our better moments, we would engage in conversation around the points offered.  Instead, the Bandwagon Committee is formed to make sure ears are properly tickled and fancied.

Tu quoque

This is a Latin term which literally means “and you also.”  This fallacy is so ubiquitous and done with such frequency that we might take it for granted.  It’s the old time-honored saw of an appeal to hypocrisy.  The tu quoque is meant to discredit the opposing argument by not even acknowledging it.  Perhaps you have seen this one splattered in social media and around the narthex after a church service: “Don’t even talk to me about how guns kill people and how the government isn’t doing anything about it when we have legalized abortion and babies are killed every day.”  Whatever you think about abortion (I happen to oppose it) is not the issue.  If guns and gun control is the issue being discussed, then that is the issue to be dealt with.  Bringing up another issue gets us nowhere.

Ad hominem

Since we’re on the Latin terms, let’s keep it going with a fallacy which isn’t going away any time soon.  “Ad hominem” means “to the person.”  Rather than attacking the argument and engaging the issue, this fallacy just attacks the person.  This is especially rife when it comes to anything to do with LGBTQ issues.  Individual rights, justice, and treating persons with civility and respect don’t get discussed.  Instead, the person using the ad hominem just paints all same-sex oriented persons as having illicit and/or immoral thoughts and behaviors, thereby shutting down any sort of helpful discussion about the proper treatment of a group of people.

Appeal to authority

I’ve got to admit, this one really irritates me.  If I hear one more person characterize myself or a group of other Christians as people who “don’t hold to the authority of Scripture” I think I’ll scream… then scream some more.  The problem here is a blanket statement.  No actual biblical arguments are offered, just the appeal to biblical authority.  If an issue is exegetically and hermeneutically possible, then it ought to be allowed a hearing in the arena of ideas.  Not even engaging an idea or entertaining an argument based on generic appeals to biblical authority have no teeth.  It’s fallacious, not to mention offensive.

No True Scotsman

I just like the way this one sounds.  “No true Scotsman” is a way of reinterpreting evidence to prevent any kind of rebuttal or further debate.  In other words, it’s changing the rules.  Recently, when I was discussing with a local church elder about that church’s denominational ruling on an issue, he simply said to me, “Well, that’s the denomination’s view and not the Bible’s view.”  It was meant to shut down any discussion and not consider an issue he didn’t like very well.  But even though he didn’t like it, he’s a part of a group of people who decided together to hold to some common policies and procedures.  The proper approach would be to engage the issue and work through proper channels to see his view through.  But he wasn’t willing to do that.

Another example (I had a lot of these in the past year) is the congregant who was convinced the world was going to end.  When the blood moon thing didn’t align like he thought it would a few years back, he just reinterpreted things to accommodate more apocalyptic stuff into his homebrewed theology.

False Dichotomy

A better term for this is probably the “black or white” fallacy.  This sets up an issue as being an either/or instead of a both/and.  It has the design to shepherd people into a certain position without considering any alternatives.  I recently heard a guy make the following statement in a church attempting a discussion about war: “Either you support our military and our country, or you don’t.”  This was a black or white implication.  For him, to oppose war is to oppose our flag and our men and women in uniform.  But there are a whole range of conversations to be had around the issue.  To boil them down in such stark black and white terms is a false dichotomy.

I could keep going.  It was a busy year for me dealing with so many logical fallacies.  But more to the point: You and I need to be mentally vigilant as to the kinds of things we think, and the notions we listen to from other people.  Sometimes we simply don’t stop and think through what we’re saying, or what we’re listening to.  My hope is that we will slow down, think through issues with some sound reason, consider all angles, the consequences of our thoughts, and take the posture of a learner and a grower.

 

Lent

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
            Imagine you are out for a hike on a beautiful spring day and you come to a creek. You notice that someone has dumped trash into the stream—not a pretty sight. Judging by some of the empty soda cans, the trash has been there awhile. And there is an ugly film on top of the water. You can’t just leave the scene as you found it, because it would bother your conscience.
            So, you stoop down and begin gathering the trash.  It ends up taking several hours before you can begin to see a difference.  You’re amazed how much junk is there. You sit back, rest for a moment, and realize you’ll have to keep coming each day until the site is truly clean. But when you come back the next day, it’s as if you didn’t even do any work at all.  In fact, there’s more trash than the day before. It’s as if the garbage bred overnight. You think about the unlikelihood of someone coming to this very spot to dump their garbage just in the one measly day you were away.
             Then, you realize that something smells fishy—so to speak. So, you begin to follow the creek upstream.  Sure enough, there’s a nasty garbage dump that’s been there for years. It’s emptying into the passing creek. Your cleaning job was only a small opening to a world of filth. You could try and clean every day.  But if you really want your creek to be free of pollution, this means going directly to the source and dealing with the crud that’s there.
            Our hearts are the source from which our lives flow. Unfortunately, we spend great amounts of time, money, and energy—even in the church—doing trash removal “downstream.” But real transformation begins when we travel upstream to the source. Our real struggles and sins take place where no one sees: in the heart.
            Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day in the season of Lent.  Ashes remind us that we live in a polluted world full of garbage; that it is fouling up our lives; and, that we must respond to the mess with a humble return to God.  Lent is a 40-day cleaning project on the inside of our hearts, instead of trying to keep up dealing with all the scum on the outside of our lives.
            Entrance to confronting the dump of garbage requires fasting, self-examination, prayer and repentance.  As the Lord God said through the ancient prophet Joel:
“It isn’t too late.
You can still return to me
with all your heart.
Start crying and mourning!
Go without eating.
Don’t rip your clothes
to show your sorrow.
Instead, turn back to me
with broken hearts.
I am merciful, kind, and caring.
I don’t easily lose my temper,
and I don’t like to punish.” (Joel 2:12-13, CEB)
 
            We find that at the end of the Lenten journey, Jesus is there.  He swallows all the massive tonnage of the world’s garbage on the cross.  It’s so rotten that it kills him, and there is only darkness.  Then, three days later, Christ is risen, having shaken off the filthy stench of death.  Jesus Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of the prophet’s words, the merciful one who has taken care of the filthy source of garbage once and for all.
            May you find on this day and every day that the spiritual practices of prayer, fasting, and repentance put you in a place to receive Jesus. As you lean into the mess in throughout the next six weeks of Lent, may you discover the cleansing and healing agent, Jesus Christ, the Savior who scrubs the heart clean of toxic waste.