AnderspeaK
Rogerian Faith
ROGERIAN FAITH
No, not Carl Rogers, the pioneer of Rogerian, self-actualization psychology, but Fred Rogers—that’s Mister Rogers, to you and me. Carl Rogers founded a school of psychology based on the idea that every human being is driven to become their best self (Yes, that was Carl Rogers, not Joel Osteen), while Fred Rogers pioneered television programming aimed at the psychology of the most vulnerable, most important, people in the world: small children.
One thing both Rogers had in common was the idea of Unconditional Positive Regard. Carl introduced the term and laid it down as the cornerstone of the therapist’s role. Fred put it into constant, unswerving practice, and so should we.
Two movies that belong on your “definitely must-see” are “Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018)” which is a documentary on the life and work of Fred Rogers, and “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” currently in theaters with Tom Hanks in the lead role. Both movies qualify as modern hagiographies (stories saints). Both movies will bring tears to your eyes and that happy awareness that comes from knowing that goodness always wins out with patience and persistence.
John 13: 34-35: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Our witness in the world is missed or rejected because it is seen only as moral judgment. People flee Christians because they feel they have to clean up their act in our presence, and doing so is loathsome to them. Christians are seen as killjoys and blue-noses. They see us as moral hall-monitors, ever vigilant to catch them doing something sinful. Our very presence seems to mean they have to be acting within a code of behavior that they don’t like. Rather than endure all that, they just want us away from their orbit.
So how did they get that idea? Do we really come off as the constant, moral tattletales of the world? To be sure, plenty of Christians delight in playing moral vigilantes, and yes, they can be difficult to be around. Is there a better way to be—a better way to shape our witness to a world of sinners who desperately don’t want to be called out for their sins? Absolutely. The love thing has to come first.
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
— John 13: 34-35:
Our witness in the world is missed or rejected because it is seen only as moral judgment. People flee Christians because they feel they have to clean up their act in our presence, and doing so is loathsome to them. Christians are seen as killjoys and blue-noses. They see us as moral hall-monitors, ever vigilant to catch them doing something sinful. Our very presence seems to mean they have to be acting within a code of behavior that they don’t like. Rather than endure all that, they just want us away from their orbit.
So how did they get that idea? Do we really come off as the constant, moral tattletales of the world? To be sure, plenty of Christians delight in playing moral vigilantes, and yes, they can be difficult to be around. Is there a better way to be—a better way to shape our witness to a world of sinners who desperately don’t want to be called out for their sins? Absolutely. The love thing has to come first.
We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.
— 1 John 3:16:
Love that is less than unconditional is less than the love God shows us through Christ. Jesus is the Word of Love to humankind—the message that God’s love is greater than our sin. As such, we Christian must take the greatest care to show love meaningfully before we try to play moral police.
Imagine this: a group of rebellious and sullen teens sit on their cars in the parking lot of the football stadium. They’re smoking, drinking, cussing—being rebel teens. Along comes an adult to chastise them for their inappropriate behavior:
“You kids! Don’t move around at the scrimmage line, we’ll get called for offsides! And when the quarterback throws the ball to you, don’t slow down but keep running your pattern!”
The kids look at the adult incredulously. “What in the world is he talking about?” they say.
The so-called help the adult offers is pointless and useless to the teens because they are not in the game. They are not even in the stadium. The help is useless.
Before you give instructions about the game, you must make sure others are in the stadium, on the team, and in the game. Otherwise, it all sounds like a bunch of pointless blather. This is why all evangelism begins—and perhaps ends—in love, love, love.
And that is unconditional love. Love that says, “We will love you if…” is nothing but a sales pitch or an invitation to social conformity. Neither are very appealing.
The kind of love we must practice is more like laying down our lives, which is exactly what Christ models for us. That includes laying down our need to be right or righteous. means laying down our need to correct others for their sinfulness.
In Jesus’ name I tell you let it go. We can trust in the Holy Spirit to make those connections once they are inside the stadium.
Love brings us out of the parking lot into the stadium. It puts us on the team and into the game. The rules, the morals, and the game’s instructions mean nothing until the outsider is made an insider who truly feels that he or she belongs.
Mister Fred Rogers (a Presbyterian Minister, by the way) modeled that love with patience, persistence, and a laser-sharp focus that transformed nearly every environment he encountered. He was an effective and winsome witness for Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God. I consider him a true hero and I implore you to join me in putting that same practice of unconditional love ahead of every other aspect of our witness. In time, with God’s help, our witness will be heard and eagerly received. †
Smells Like Teen Spirit
SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT
Pardon me for going to the archives, but some 48 years ago, Life Magazine(May 14, 1971) reported on the "new" Christianity that was spreading among teenagers in Rye, New York. Quote:
The sociology professor is bewildered, and the businessman, and the Sunday school teacher, and the banker and the editor, and the travel agency lady, and a number of others. . .because their children have become Christians. This Christianity that obsesses them has little to do with nativity pageants, bake sales or the stained-glass embodiment of remote virtue. They feel Christ as an immediate presence, and see the Bible as the irrefutably accurate word of God.
“It’s so neat! It’s out of sight! It’s a gas! It frees you from fear! It’s super-edifying!” they say, and who can say it any better than enthused teenagers? One mother, a travel agent who was getting her master’s in library science said, “Sometimes I almost wish they would go back to something simple like smoking a little grass. Drugs I can try to understand, but this? This is creepy.”
What happened to these righteous teens who managed to creep out their parents by becoming devout Christians? Simple: they’ve been creeping out the mainline churches ever since, and praise God for it.
The same generation that left drugs and self-indulgence for the Jesus Movement has since done more to grow the Church than all the mainline denominations combined. The independent church movement of the past half-century has eclipsed denominationalism, gathering people by the thousands and hundred-thousands and sending them back into the world to love their neighbors and spread the good news of Jesus Christ. We “mainliners” have been put to shame, evangelism-wise.
Usually, we like look down our noses, glibly critical of the “McDonald’s churches” and their low-church, consumer-appeal. “We know how to do church!” we think, “we’ve been doing it —decently and in order—for hundreds of years! These newfangled, wannabe churches won’t last! They’ll go the way of every fad before them—sprouting up like weeds, maybe, but they’ll die like weeds as well!” But we were wrong.
The work of the Church is not now, nor can it ever be, a matter of waving the denominational flag. Club loyalty is a strike against the gospel. The true gospel is a mission on the move. It is in motion and we are either with it, supporting and bolstering its new life, or we are out of it and otherwise enjoying our pews, organs, and casseroles.
Our work is now—as always—to do exactly what the teenagers of Rye, New York did in 1971; namely, to energetically seek God’s presence through prayer and Scripture, and to lead and train others to do likewise. The task is bigger than any denomination, and the denomination that forgets this is probably not worth preserving.
Knowing Christ, growing in Him, and making Him known—that is discipleship. The forms follow the function. The shape of our particular ministries follow our core purposes: our mission, vision, and values. We must be willing to allow our mission to shape and reshape us in every year. If we don’t, we become relics—a boutique industry like a typewriter store. If we do, we get a place at the front lines where the Spirit of God is wildly active and spurring people on to new risks and adventures in every year. That is the real life of walking with the Spirit. That is where all the juice and energy is. It is where we experience the power and presence of God challenging us beyond our comforts and empowering us in all that He is doing here and now. Do you know what else it is? “It’s so neat! It’s out of sight! It’s a gas! It frees you from fear! It’s super-edifying!” †
Presbyopia Ahead
PRESBYOPIA AHEAD
2020 vision is a blessing to anyone and a rarity after fifty. Many people can go well into middle age without reading glasses, so long as their arms grow a little longer. This far-sightedness has a great name: presbyopia. Presbyopia usually begins with the inability to read fine print—a fitting parallel for minds with a low tolerance for persnickety details. In time, we all develop presbyopia, but our far-sightedness is too often focused on the glories of the distant past. Many of us—perhaps too many of us—find our sense of self by looking to the past. Who we were, what we were, who our friends and family were, what we liked—these building blocks of selfhood can anchor our vision behind us, locking us to the past for our sense of value. When we look only backward, we fail to pursue the mission and vision which Christ sets before us on the road ahead. How much healthier would we be if our presbyopia were to turn its gaze toward the future!
We should think of “2020 Vision” as the way we collectively survey the road ahead of us, specifically, next year, 2020.
What should we see ahead? In short, our vision should take in—clearly focused—the next steps of our mission: Growing in Christ; Making Him Known. What steps will lead us closer to full Christian maturity, fuller commitment, and greater alignment with God’s will and Kingdom?
It’s not enough for your pastor, staff, and elders to see these steps clearly; if you cannot see them yourself, you are more likely to keep your gaze fixed upon your own comforts, your own will, and the blessed glories of the past. Here are some of those steps as I see them:
1. The Second Mountain
David Brooks is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times who, late in life, has experienced spiritual reawakening through his relationship with his Christian girlfriend. In his recent book, The Second Mountain, he details his awakening in terms of the “two mountains” of this life. The book takes its title from a heuristic that Brooks developed to differentiate the people he wanted to be like from those he didn’t. “It’s gotten so I can recognize first- and second-mountain people,” he writes confidently. Those on their first mountain of life tend to focus on themselves: on establishing an identity, on managing their reputation, on status and reward. The second mountain is normally reached only after a period of suffering (“the valley”), and those who make it there come to focus on others. “The second mountain is about shedding the ego and losing the self,” about contribution rather than acquisition, egalitarianism rather than élitism, Brooks writes. The satisfaction of second-mountain people is deeper (it is a “bigger mountain”) and leads not to happiness but to joy.
So much of this life is focused upon working hard to make something of oneself, establishing reputation, security, and a living for yourself and your family. The “second mountain” is the life we live for others. It’s not a mountain everyone climbs.
For those of us following Jesus, our spiritual development can be seen as our effort to minimize the first mountain and maximize the second. We should all have a second mountain in our vision, our presbyopic focus.
2. Children and Youth
We need our children and grandchildren to be nurtured in the faith with clear picture of that second mountain built into every one of them. We nurture them well when they see their life and adulthood as more than self-establishment, but a life lived for Christ’s Kingdom characterized by mission, outreach, and service to the Lord. Helping them develop a lifelong roadmap which includes a second mountain is not only the best thing we can do for their spiritual formation; it is one of the best things we can do for this world and God’s Kingdom.
3. The Village
In an age of increasing digital isolation (Hey! Yeah, I’m talking to you—put down your iPhone!), it is crucial that the local church become the local “village” where people make significant personal and social connections. In the non-stop suburban sprawl that is The Inland Empire, loneliness is epidemic, even though surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people. Why? Because we live in our cars and our personal rabbit trails between home, work, the bank, and Trader Joes. We need First Pres to become a true village—a place where children know adults their grandparents’ age who are not their grandparents, and adults know the names and characters of our youth and children. Deep down, we all long for these connections and we need them. The Body of Christ must be intergenerational in more than just paperwork; we need to connect relationally and deeply, since we share the same destiny.
Let us be of one mind and spirit as we look forward to 2020, knowing that the Holy Spirit lives among us and works within us to form us after the image and likeness of Christ, and may we increasingly grow to give ourselves away in order that we summit that second mountain before Jesus calls us home.
As Brooks writes, “Jesus is the person who shows us what giving yourself away looks like.” †