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It was almost two years ago to the week that we adopted a rescue dog from the local animal shelter. We named him Buddy, and life has never been the same.

Buddy should have been a cat because I'm sure he's had the proverbial nine lives. Soon after getting him he trashed our basement. We soon moved on to other containment measures but he seemed to get out of them as well. His first Christmas with us we came home from church, and he had trashed part of our living room to show us he wasn't happy being left alone. This was on vet prescribed Valium as well. Hate to see him if he became really excited.

I count at least 4 or 5 times that we really considered getting rid of him. At the beginning Charlene kept Buddy in the game. Lately it was me. He was getting a lot better and we were finally beginning to reap the benefits of sticking it out. I joked with Charlene that I wanted to keep him a good long time so that we could amortize all that we've invested in him over a longer period.

But this Tuesday we were on vacation in Ithica, New York, and Buddy was stolen. I wish I could say that I'm feeling magnanimous for the new owners, but I'm not there yet.

I haven't given up hope completely yet, but at least for now, it's the end of Buddy's adventuresome life with us. Knowing him it will continue, except with someone else. I wish them the best of luck. They'll need it.

A package from Intervarsity UK just arrived in the mail with three books, including the hard-to-get Total Church. Looking forward to reading this one.

Flipping through it, I found this quote that touches on our models of leadership within the church that are performance based:

The real tragedy of leadership-as-performance is that it devalues the work of Christ. Our identity is not rooted in grace, but in the success of our ministry. And so we feel good when we have performed well and we feel down when things are not going well. We become enslaved to other people's approval. We are concerned to prove ourselves and that is just another way of talking about self-justification. We preach justification by faith on the day of judgment, but do not practice justification by faith in the daily routine of our lives. Our practical theology has become disconnected from our confessional theology. Our song becomes:

My hope is built on something less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness;
I trust my skills, I trust my fame,
and maybe sometimes Jesus' name.

But we cannot keep it up. Self-justification is always beyond us. The chorus of Edward Mote's hymn which I have taken the liberty of inverting actually goes: 'On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand; all other ground is sinking sand.' Leadership-as-performance is sinking sand.

This book looks really good. Looking forward to getting into it.

Beloit College has just released its annual list describing the mindset of students about to enter college, most of whom were born in 1989.

Each August for the past decade, as faculty prepare for the academic year, Beloit College in Wisconsin has released the Beloit College Mindset List. Its 70 items provide a look at the cultural touchstones that have shaped the lives of today's first-year students, most of them born in 1989...

Latchkey kids for most of their lives, students entering college this fall think nothing of arriving home with parents still at work, then e-mailing or texting their friends, instantly updating their autobiographies on "Facebook" or "MySpace," and listening to their iPods while doing their research on Wikipedia. They've grown up with Rush Limbaugh urging his fellow Dittoheads to excoriate liberals, with having been taught by an equal number of women and men in the classroom, and with women having been hired as police chiefs of major cities.

Food has always been a health concern. Consumer awareness about ingredients and fats has always been energized. They've never "rolled down" a car window, and to them Jack Nicholson is mainly known as the guy who played "The Joker."

As usual, they remind their elders how quickly time has passed. For them Pete Rose has never been in baseball. Abbie Hoffman's always been dead. Johnny Carson has never been live on TV, and Nelson Mandela has always been free.

As for the Berlin Wall, what's that?"

There's more on the complete list.

This morning we attended St. Paul's Anglican Church in downtown Toronto. We picked the 9:30 family service, which is held in a corner of the huge sanctuary and feels surprisingly intimate. It uses some liturgy but is neither high church nor low church. The sermon was excellent.

I'm struck with the history of a place like that, as well as the huge physical plant, and a calling to a very urban neighborhood. Jim Collins talks about preserving the core while stimulating progress. This church seems to be a good example of how to do that. They're rooted in tradition, theologically robust, and missional.

I'm also coming to realize that some of the richest experiences I've had visiting churches are when I visit liturgical ones, like St. Paul's and Nashville Presbyterian Church in Maple. Maybe the sermons of Redeemer Presbyterian in New York on my iPod count as well. Scot McKnight talks about the first time he experienced The Book of Common Prayer. "Two things stood out in those days: (1) those prayers were mighty prayers and (2) lots of spontaneous prayers were, no matter how sincere, well ... sloppy."

I just may have to come out of the closet as a liturgist at heart. Just don't tell.

Ron Heifetz describes the leadership we usually look for, compared to the leadership we really need, in Leadership Without Easy Answers:

In a crisis we tend to look for the wrong kind of leadership. We call for someone with answers, decision, strength, and a map of the future, someone who knows where we ought to be going - in short, someone who can make hard problems simple. But problems...are not [always] simple. Instead of looking for saviors, we should be calling for leadership that will challenge us to face problems for which there are no simple, painless solutions - problems that require us to learn new ways.

We have many such problems...Making progress on these problems demands not just someone who provides answers from on high but changes in our attitudes, behavior, and values. To meet challenges such as these, we need a different idea of leadership and a new social contract that promote our adaptive capacities, rather than inappropriate expectations of authority.

Another Heifetz quote I wrote down today:

Imagine the differences in behavior between leaders who operate with the idea that "leadership means influencing the organization to follow the leader’s vision" and those who operate with the idea that "leadership means influencing the organization to face its problems and live into its opportunities."

It's now generally accepted that if you are going to be a leader, you need vision. I generally buy this. Some of the most effective leaders I know have modeled this for me. It's a lot better than drifting.

But vision also has its dangers. Vision is especially dangerous if you're a Christian leader and you're going to invoke the name of God.

C.S. Lewis wrote to his brother during World War II:

In the litany this morning we had some extra petitions, one of which was "Prosper, O Lord, our righteous cause"... When I met [the reverend] in the porch, I ventured to protest against the audacity of informing God that our cause was righteous - a point on which He may have his own view... I hope it is quite like ours, of course: but you never know with Him.

We hope that our vision is from God, but when we inform him that our vision is righteous, or - even worse - pretend that our vision came from God, we're on dangerous ground.

In Lewis's Screwtape Letters, Screwtape advised his young nephew, a junior demon, on how to destroy his patient (a human) in a time of war:

Quietly and gradually nurse him into the stage at which religion becomes merely part of the "cause" [vision] and his [faith] is valued chiefly for the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the [vision]. … Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades mean more to him than prayer and and sacraments and charity, he is ours--and the more "religious" on those terms the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.

The more religious our vision, the more dangerous, especially if faith plays a supporting role to vision.

I've heard talk this week about having a vision worth dying for. "As a leader" it's said, "people will follow your lead. They will own the vision as much as you own it. If you're not willing to die for it, then it's not a vision worth dying for."

Maybe, but Charlene overheard someone respond, "I'd die for Jesus, but I wouldn't die for my church's vision." The problem is that we often confuse the two.

All organizations (including churches) need vision - but Lewis reminds us that God and the angels are not necessarily on the side of our vision statements. That's something every leader has to remember.

I'm still finding that social justice sometimes takes a backseat to evangelism in some circles. In others, it's just the opposite. In his book Compassion, Justice, and the Christian Life, Robert Lupton argues that valuing people's souls more than their bodies does great harm:

If you believe that either eternal bliss or eternal damnation awaits every person after death, then the most loving act is to present the truth of the gospel to as many people as possible and thus save them from everlasting destruction. It’s a compelling argument. The problem, of course, is that it leads toward viewing others as souls instead of people. And when we opt for rescuing souls over loving neighbors, compassionate acts can soon degenerate into evangelism techniques; pressing human needs depreciate in importance, and the spirit becomes the only thing worth caring about. Thus, the powerful leaven of unconditional, sacrificial love is diminished in society and the wounded are left lying beside the road. When we skip over the Great Commandment on the way to fulfilling the Great Commission, we do great harm to the authenticity of the faith…

'Sets N Service reflects on this quote:

I repent Lord of treating the gospel like it was merely a matter of a new heaven and not a new earth…

I repent Lord of treating people as souls rather than persons in the midst of their own life circumstances that need redeeming as well…

I repent Lord of isolating the new creation work of Jesus to what one believes in their minds alone rather than what one experiences and embraces with all their life…

I repent Lord for offering your widows and orphans a tract while sending them back out into the cold and hard night of destitution, desease, and hunger…

I repent Lord for mistaking sympathy for witness, and the ‘Roman’s Road Conversion Speak’ as the full inacting of the gospel of grace…

Good and important words.

No, I didn't say that I have no taste. I said I'm a non-taster. Here's what that means.

I joined BzzAgent a few years back. They run campaigns in which you get samples of products, and get to talk about them word of mouth. You have to be up front about beign a BzzAgent as you do this, and you can be completely honest and say that you hate the product if you like. You get coupons to pass out to friends if you like the product.

One of their recent campaigns has been for Tabasco. I love hot food, so I signed on in a heartbeat. Got lots of mini bottles of Tabasco and some coupons, as well as a booklet.

The booklet explains that 2 out of 3 Canadians say that their taste profile is bold. They give you a little test that involves putting blue food coloring on your tongue, placing a paper-hole reinforcement on your tongue, and then couting the little pink circles within the hole. 15 or fewer means you're a non-taster. 16 to 35 means you're a taster. 35+ qualifies you as a super-taster.

Non-tasters feel about half the burn of heat versus tasters. And tasters feel about half the heat of super-tasters. That's why I like it hot.

I also learned the reason for my addiction to heat:

The spice in peppers stimulates the nerve endings in your mouth, fooling your brain into thinking you're in pain. Your brain then releases endorphins, producing mild euphoria. This hot pepper "high" makes peppers mildly addictive - that's why many people crave this taste sensation.

That explains a lot, actually.

My friend LT suggests that sermons may be like nitrogen in fertilizer. It's necessary, yet too high a concentration is deadly:

The point I try to make about sermons is that they are like nitrogen in lawn fertilizer. I might broaden "sermon" to involve any kind of proclamation to a group of people but you probably get my point. Nitrogen is an essential element in fertilizer but if you use too much in the wrong proportions it will kill your lawn. I'm no more opposed to sermons in church than I am to nitrogen in fertilizer.

The church today is like a homeowner with a bunch of dead grass that keeps pouring nitrogen on it expecting it to grow. We keep filling peoples minds with knowledge assuming that growth will come but we see just the opposite.

Maybe, just maybe we need to back off on some central assumptions on things and rethink our strategy. You can't make a lawn grow just like you can't make people grow. But there are sure fire ways you can kill the process. I don't think it is wise to rest content with the lack of visible life transformation in the church because growth is God's job. If most of the church is dead it probably isn't because God isn't doing his part. We have to consider that we may just be aborting the growth process.

In general, I think we rely too much on one event that includes preaching. For many people this one event is church. We may need to move beyond church services, as I wrote a few months back.

Effective preaching should point to what else is needed in order for growth to happen.

My latest column at Christian Week:

Alan Hirsch, author of The Forgotten Ways, argues that people in our culture generally have good perceptions of God, Jesus, and spirituality, but have very negative perceptions of church. Speaking near Toronto in late June, Hirsch argued that churches that are doing the best in places like Australia and Canada follow the contemporary church growth model, but even this approach appeals to only 12-15% of the population. God is using this model, Hirsch said, but it is limited in its effectiveness and will never reach a large proportion of the population.

Maggi Dawn writes about Christianity and the church, and successfully challenges both those who are disillusioned with church and those who don't understand the disillusionment:

It is almost always the case that you cannot be authentically Christian unless you are part of a Christian community. Why? The reason, I think, is that the gospel demands engagement in relationship. It has an individual element to it, but it is essentially a social religion.

That's not to say, of course, that "the church" as we know it always lives up to its calling...Traditional church structures are a stumbling block for some....

So what do we with the call of the gospel to become part of the Church, if our experience of Church thus far is just too bad to overcome? The answer to this dilemma, I believe, is not to abandon the idea of church, but to rediscover what it means for church to be fully a community. This applies equally to denominational churches that have lost their way, and to new groups that are afraid of being too committed for fear of getting hurt again. The answer in both cases is not to withdraw, but to create community. And this will not come to anyone without cost and some degree of hurt along the way, because it's in the nature of creating community that it is both challenging and expensive to the individual. A community that doesn't challenge your ego and upset your equilibrium from time to time is probably not getting to grips with the faith.

more

Reminds me of David Fitch - we don't need to abandon ecclesiology (the theology of the church). We need a reinvigorated ecclesiology. Bob Hyatt has also written on this recently and found himself stuck in the middle between two sides.

Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller, highlights two ways of seeing the world:

The late Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder once captured the impulse quite nicely when, in the course of one of our public Anabaptist-Calvinist debates in the 1970s, someone in the audience asked him if he could put in simple terms what he saw as the basic issue of disagreement between his views and mine. Here is how he answered: on questions of culture, he observed, "Mouw wants to say, 'Fallen, but created,' and I want to say, 'Created, but fallen.'"

That was a helpful way of putting the differences, including the element of ambivalence in each case.

Mouw continues by reflecting on the influence of Kuyper on his thinking:

We Kuyperians do pay considerable attention to fallenness—at least we ought to—but our basic Kuyperian impulse is to look for signs that God has not given up, even in the midst of a fallen world, on restoring the purposes that were at work in God's initial creating activity.

This calls for Christians, then, to work actively together as agents of this restorative program that encompasses the whole range of cultural involvement. In those circles where Kuyper's name is still revered, laypeople credit Kuyper's influence in their understanding of what it means to serve the Lord in the insurance business or journalism, as a state legislator or in the teaching of English literature. Even when these folks may not know much about the technical details of Kuyper's theological system, they are quick to quote at least some version of his bold manifesto, set forth toward the end of his inaugural address at the founding of the Vrije Universiteit: "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'"

There is a lot to unpack in these two ways of seeing the world that, at first, don't look all that different.

Simpsonize Me

LT reacts to yesterday's post on preaching by suggesting that preaching isn't biblical or helpful:

I see very few examples of anything resembling a sermon being preaching to those who have decided to follow Christ...I think most people are far better served by just picking up a bible and reading it themselves.

It's not hard to see why people have negative views of preaching/teaching. As Haddon Robinson says, it's has suffered more at the hands of its friends than its enemies. We've all endured preaching that is less than helpful.

As well, we may expect too much of Sunday morning in general and the sermon in particular. You can listen to sermons endlessly, but it won't change you. Check out this post from D.J. Chuang on how good preaching (such as that by Tim Keller) can fail to produce transformation:

But as good a preacher as Keller is, he can’t break through and create life transformation. I know first-hand of avid Keller listeners who don’t seem to have totally changed lives. They listen to Keller probably more than I do, many listen to him live and person week in week out, quote him, promote him, and yet something’s missing.

Keller replies:

Listening to sermons and reading books – even very good ones – doesn’t really change character. It’s community that does that. You mainly become like those you hang out with, not those you listen to in a mass audience. For years I’ve seen this – "fans" who love the message but don’t get deeply involved in community don’t really change. They talk about the gospel but it doesn’t effect their lives. I’m glad you point this out. Yes, even if you like my sermons (and I’m humbled that you do) – preaching alone can’t "break through."

That being said, it's a mistake to devalue the role of teaching in the church. You can and probably should evaluate the form and the most effective way to teach, but don't ditch teaching. As someone else said today, people generally lack "a biblical background and a theological grid from which to shape their lives." The solution to this isn't less biblical teaching; it's better teaching as part of the church's life. Our minds and our understanding of the world needs to be shaped by Scripture.

David Fitch may be more helpful. He argues that preaching should not consist of handing out more to-do lists. Instead, it should re-narrate the world and form our imaginations. At the same time, it is more communal, and the senior pastor is not everything. Preaching, he says, can only be "the tip of a communal iceberg."

The Bible speaks highly of teaching all over the place, but it's only part of the picture. "Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers" (Ephesians 5:11). By all means, let's move away from pastor-centric models of church life, and let's move toward the ministry of the many, as LT says. There are more than teachers in the verse I just quoted. Let's emphasize the others - but let's not lose the important role of teaching as part of the church's life in the process.

Ever since we could choose a home phone service provider, I've found myself beguiled by cheaper deals. You name it, I've probably tried it. And I've suffered through:

• bundles that include high-speed DSL service that doesn't work
• echoes on the phone line, like we're talking through a tunnel
• misspellings of my last name (is Dash really that hard to spell?)
• almost losing the phone number we've had for 17 years
• misplaced orders (the orders that got lost only took 15 minutes to make)

This morning I talked to someone who asked at the end of the call, "Have I answered all of your questions?" He seemed surprised when I said no, but it's true. And sadly it's almost what I expect now.

You've heard the definition of insanity: trying the same thing and expecting different results. Therefore, I'm insane when it comes to local phone service.

I'm in the middle of a nightmare with one service provider now, and if it doesn't work, I promise you I'll go back to Bell regardless of the price. And if I ever change again, I give you written permission to shoot me*.

*Permission applies to watergun or taser only. Consult your lawyer for legal advice before proceeding.

I'm really not sure how common sermon plagiarism is. If it is becoming more common, I think there are a few reasons:

• a diminished view of preaching (not new - you read about this a century ago)
• availability of sermons on the Internet and other media - the sermon industry
• competition from other pastors (people rate you against the best preachers on iTunes and radio)
• pragmatism (why waste time preparing when you can get a ready-made sermon online?)

Add to that the reality that good preaching is hard work. It involves rigorous thought and soul work as well. Many preachers take the easy route and decide to preach other people's sermons instead.

I remember reading a book last year that essentially said, "Why waste your time preparing messages when you have a church to build?" I remember reading another book in which a pastor admitted how much time it took to prepare a sermon. His friend across the table raised an eyebrow, as if he was squandering his time.

What amazes me about this is that it is sometimes the same people who devalue time spent in preparation who praise the artisan bread baker, composer, and writer. If all of these can be sacred vocations, why not preaching? Should preaching not require the same care?

In any case, Kevin Vanhoozer gives one of the most convincing reasons why preaching other people's sermons just doesn't work. In his book The Drama of Doctrine, he uses the picture of doctrine as a script, the pastor as a director, and the local church as a company of performers who improvise to perform that script. In this sense, preaching is local. It has to do with a particular group of people performing within a particular context. Someone else's sermon just won't do, because the best preaching is local. Vanhoozer writes:

The sermon, not some leadership philosophy or management scheme, remains the prime means of pastoral direction and hence the pastor's paramount responsibility. The good sermon contains both script analysis and situation analysis. It is in the sermon that the pastor weaves together theo-dramatic truth and local knowledge. The sermon is the best frontal assault on imaginations held captive by secular stories that promise other ways to the good life. Most important, the sermon envisions ways for the local congregation to become a parable of the kingdom of God. It is the pastor's/director's vocation to help congregations hear (understand) and do (perform) God's word in and for the present.

The time spent doing this well is worth it. Vanhoozer quotes Herman Melville's image of the pulpit as a ship's prow that leads the way through uncharted waters: “The pulpit leads the world.” In some ways, it does.

Tim Keller comments:

I think it would be most accurate to say that Reformed theology has always had great resources within it for missional work. For example:

1. Stanley Grenz credits Calvin for teaching on the Trinity that stresses the communal aspect of God's nature,
2. Richard Muller points out that Post-reformation Calvinist theologians forged a theology that wasn't 'modern' and based on traditional rationalistic proofs of God,
3. Jonathan Edwards provides theological resources for profoundly mystical personal experience of God,
4. Geerhardus Vos and Herman Ridderbos stress that the Bible isn't a systematic theology textbook but rather a narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration,
5. Kuyper and Wolterstorff give resources for working on justice and renewal of culture.

There's lots to work with! That doesn't mean that many or most Reformed churches have used these resources that well in mission, however.

Looks like I have a few books to add to my reading list.

I wrote this article in 2002, and it appeared in the September-October 2004 issue of Preaching, but I've never published it online. It's received new life recently because I was quoted in an article on sermon plagiarism that appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution - an article that's good, but that overstated my own history on the topic.

In any case, here's my original column.

We were recently notified that one of X’s messages was reproduced on your website. While we are delighted that you use our material, I need to remind you that our sermons are copyright protected content and may not be distributed or reproduced (in whole or in part) beyond your immediate congregation without our permission and without proper attribution to the author. As such, we would ask that you remove this message, along with any other sermons you may have reproduced there which are based on X’s outlines. Thank you in advance for your immediate attention to this request.

I had to admit it when I received this e-mail. Like it or not, I had become what I had always condemned – a sermon thief. I was the Winona Ryder of preachers.

I’m now a sermon thief in recovery. Here is some of what I learned along the way.

I could be wrong, but I sense that the ground has shifted.

A few years ago, what we now call the emerging church was fresh and connected with a lot of us who were a little weary of the church growth movement and a pragmatic approach to faith. This movement has been somewhat helpful, but it wasn't without its problems - some theological and some due to the fact that it was still, well, emerging or deconstructing. But I sense this first phase has lost some steam - not a completely bad thing. The emerging church was never the point. (By the way, LT has a stimulating post on this today).

It really seems that just as the emerging movement seems to be slowing or changing, the Reformed movement has taken over, as suggested by Christianity Today and others. What's interesting is that there is a real missional edge to this, as evidenced by guys like Tim Keller (see Keller's The Missional Church in PDF). It's not your mother's Reformed church. It's theologically robust but also contextual and it's making an impact. It's also more theologically conservative, but it's solidly missional.

What do you think? Do you sense some of the same things happening?