A Tribute to my Brother, Jerry Sims

My brother, Rev. Gerald Sims, passed away on February 11, 2014, after a long struggle with cancer.  This is some stuff I want to say about him.

First of all,  Jerry was smart.  I was not particularly aware of this until we were teenagers.  Jerry was a year-and-a-half younger than me, and I remember when it first dawned on me that he was unusually intelligent.  We were riding in the back seat of the family station wagon along the freeways of Detroit’s downriver area where Dad was a pastor, probably on the way to a Bible quiz meet where Jerry was a star quizzer,  and on the way,  Jerry was figuring out the square roots of the license numbers of the cars we were passing.  Pocket calculators weren’t the thing yet then, and he didn’t need paper and pencil;  Jerry was doing all the calculations in his head.  I knew what a square root was, but I certainly didn’t consider it fun or entertaining to figure them out as a pastime while riding in the car.   I was still playing the ABC game.

Jerry loved words too.

Maybe this is why it struck me as especially diabolical that the cancer that eventually attacked his brain was first discovered in the mathematical center and then in the areas that controlled language and vocabulary.  That just wasn’t fair.

Early in his brain cancer journey, I recall asking Jerry if the tumor gave him a headache.  He paused a minute, searching for the right word, and then smiled.  “Why couldn’t I think of the word aspirin,” he said, “all that would come to me was ‘analgesic’”.  It occurred to me then, that he had probably been condescending to the rest of us all his life verbally, not wanting to sound like a geek by using the sophisticated vocabulary of which he was capable.  His condition had compromised his ability to dumb down his speech for the rest of the world.

Secondly, if respect is one possible manifestation of love, Jerry was a loving man.  He was not an emotional person or a sentimental softie like me, but many of you know that he was infallibly courteous and respectful.  I think that any time emotional love is inappropriate in the Body of Christ and in the world, respect is the most appropriate substitute, and Jerry was good at it.  I rarely ever heard him speak a critical word about anybody.

Pastors usually have one or two nemeses in their constituency whose spiritual calling is to get in the way of progress and do it as nastily as possible.  Even when Jerry was being assailed by an attacker who was viciously attempting to destroy his reputation and his career, he refused to utter a critical word about that person, even in his own defense.  I was amazed.

That was a demonstration of godly respect,  of sacrificial love.

Thirdly, if the word “liberal” means generous, Jerry was a liberal man. He was neither a legalist nor a judge of anybody.  And he was an advocate for the underdog.  That’s a family trait, by the way.

Those of you who attended my Dad’s funeral six years ago may remember Jerry telling the story of the superintendent who told Dad early in his ministry that he was a pastor who was 20 years ahead of his time.  Jerry then pointed out that all Dad’s kids were cursed with the same trait.  Later I offered an alternate perspective: Dad was not a man ahead of his time, just a minister who had enlisted in an evangelical denomination that was running 20 years or more behind the times.  As evidence for my theory I pointed out that, after Bible College, before he showed up at his first church, a circuit at Bliss and Pellston, Dad had been told that his wife would have to remove her wedding ring - jewelry was considered worldly, you know.  Well, she did, but eight years later, when they moved down to the city, Mom put her wedding ring back on... and nobody confronted her about it, and it ceased to be an issue in the Missionary Church after that.

Dad and Mom set the pace for the Sims family in being liberal.  Non-judgmental folks who respected everybody, regardless of status, gender, or orientation.  And Jerry took it even further.

I recall a few years ago when Jerry and I sat in lawn chairs at my campsite at Brown City Camp talking about what it would take to get the last restrictions on women in ministry removed from the constitution of the Missionary Church.  He said it could start with a resolution from a local church board.  I knew that there was no way that the conservative rural church board and pastor I was serving with at the time would support such a motion, but Jerry said the folks at New Hope would.  And he was right.  The resolution passed unanimously there and worked it’s way through the denominational system... and failed, of course, but that didn’t matter; at least he had tried, and church leaders had had to discuss and question their traditions again.  Yes, Jerry was a second generation liberal in a conservative denomination.

The liberal folks at New Hope will verify my observation here that Jerry was respectful, generous, and loving, a pastor who would affirm the gifts at work within men and women equally and without restriction.

Next, Jerry was a writer and author.  He wrote mostly novels, of which his first and foremost was a fantasy fiction mystery called Dreamwalker which was just released to the public a few days ago on February 8th.  You can find it on Amazon in a paperback for $16.99 or Kindle $7.99 if you like stories of adventure and intrigue.

His latest and unfinished work is a book called The Cannibal Church, which is centered around that common phenomena in our post-Christian culture:  the one new church in every town that is growing - at the expense of the other older churches in town.  Though Jerry will never complete it, probably any small town pastor living and working in the shadow of a mega church will be familiar enough with the topic to contribute to the content of that work.  Of course, that one will be non-fiction.

Finally - and this is on the lighter side - Jerry was a prankster.  I remember his practical jokes starting during the college years when he became the scourge of the pop can pyramid.  Pop can pyramids went through a popular phase while Jerry was at Bethel College, and the guys in the next room had one that he attacked several times, usually when the weather was mild and the windows were open.  One time he climbed out his window to the fire ledge when they were at class, inched his way along the outside of the building and threaded a string through the pop cans which were neatly stacked on the window sill almost to the ceiling.  He looped the string around the bottom can and then returned to his room holding the string.  Listening as the guys next door returned to their room and settled in at their desks for some studying, he pulled on the string...  and heard the delightful crash of 100 pop cans to the floor.  I think an earth tremor - in Indiana - was blamed for the incident.

For his grand finale, only last year, Jerry planned and executed an elaborate plan to fake a car wreck with sound effects while talking on the cell phone with an unsuspecting friend.  He called from the church parking lot which he had outfitted with props for breaking glass and smashing metal, and he had enlisted several of the youth who were on hand to assist with the effects.

And then he left before anybody could even the score.

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So these are a few of the essential traits that my brother possessed that bear witness to a life well lived.  As I mentioned earlier, it is a good thing for those who knew him to come together as we are today to give tribute to a wonderful man.

But there is an even greater tribute that we can offer, and that is to assimilate into our lives the characteristics that we admired in him.  It is an appropriate tribute to point out that he was a generous liberal.  A better tribute would be to become more generous ourselves.  If it was good for Jerry, it will be good for us - and will make the world a better place.

It would be fine to remember him as a courteous and respectful person, but even finer to become more loving ourselves.

It would be right to notice that he was an advocate for the underdog and the underprivileged.  It would be even more right to carry on that advocacy ourselves.

As far as being intelligent.  Uh, I’m not sure we can help ourselves on that one.  If you don’t want to factor the square roots of license plate numbers, in your head, well... maybe at least learn to play chess or work a crossword puzzle if it seems good to you.

And, uh,  I’m not suggesting anyone should aspire to become a practical joker - unless your friendships are very durable.

If you are a pastor,  like Jerry you will do well to aspire to lead a small humble congregation and give personal attention and build life-long relationships, rather than to cast a vision for the super church - which is all too often just a vision of grandeur.

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Jerry spent his entire adult life after college in ministry.  He invested every day of his life living out the Great Commandment: to love God and love people.  He demonstrated his love for the Lord, by serving people.  I say it again:  that was a life well-lived.

My brother, Gerald Sims, was a great man in a humble skin, a kind and gentle man.  And I love him and miss him already.

Thank you.

Why Rock the Boat? -- Guest Post

This is a guest post from an author I really like:  my wife, Kaye Sims,  who asks some of the questions she has been wondering about lately.  This one is addressed to church leaders who encourage cutting edge ministry... and then fail to support their pastors who actually implement innovative methods, some of them ultimately losing their jobs as a result.

...

Why do you encourage missional thinking?  Why do you bring in innovative thinkers with their radical and transformational ideas?  Why do you invest so much time and energy getting pastors fired up to lead their churches into organic, refreshing, authentic ways of doing ministry?  Why do you push these amazing, wonderful, life-changing concepts and encourage pastors to implement them?  Why do you convince people that disciple-making is not a program, but that it is a radical way of thinking and living, a fresh but ancient wave of spiritual reproduction?  Why do you challenge church leaders to dismantle their fortress mentality and to learn instead what it means to unleash the church - to BE the church outside the institutional walls?

But the real question is this:   When pastors follow these principles and find themselves and many of their people invigorated and becoming more effective in reaching their community, and then when the local power brokers get up in arms about the inevitable break from tradition, why, oh why, do you refuse to stand with those pastors?  Why in the world do you stand instead on the side of the status quo as yet another pastor gets kicked to the curb?  Why do you blame him and the people who followed him into the new Spirit-led ministry that you introduced?  Why do you label them rebellious - those who dared to venture out and live out these transformational disciple-making principles?  

Why indeed do you encourage such innovative thinking that violently upsets the apple cart?

Innovative thinkers blow up the status quo.

Wouldn't it be better to promote ways to keep things running smoothly?  Wouldn't it make more sense to invest your leadership resources and energy in training pastors how to avoid making waves?  Why don't you bring in speakers and organize conferences around the principles of compliance to authority?  Forget finding the "man of peace" in a community who might be instrumental in welcoming a move of God that would transform that town.  Instead why not train each pastor how to quickly recognize the "man of power" in the local congregation - the one who pulls the strings or at least holds them?  Wouldn't a pastor benefit from learning the steps of how to keep that person happy?  

Instead of challenging pastors and people to resist the status quo, maybe it would be smarter or safer to train them to submit to it.  Wouldn't that be the way to keep the machinery oiled and running smoothly?  The way to avoid church splits and to keep the statistics steady and the monthly reports rolling in on time.  Isn't that what matters?  

....

Kaye Sims very much enjoyed serving in church ministry for pretty much all her life until suddenly finding herself on the outside.  She has since discovered glorious freedom and loves to  watch for opportunities to be involved in reconciliation, redemption, and restoration.  She still finds herself wondering about lots of things and writes about some of them at her blog,  Wondering Journey.

Evolution - On Steroids

  On my previous post, My Problems with Evolutionary Theory, I complained about the unbelievability of the essential foundation of traditional evolution: natural selection.  In this post I am going to answer my own questions and satisfy my skepticism by describing what I think is the most sensible scenario for the origins of life.  This is all about what makes the most sense to me - and it has nothing to do with faith.

  My current belief in a supreme being is mostly based on logic.  In fact, it could be a product of my doubts about evolution.  The deal is that, as I explained earlier, I don't think natural selection is a powerful enough mechanism to produce the amazingly complex organisms that nature presents throughout the world.  It is incapable of even imagining the many intricate organs or systems or higher forms of life, let alone making them appear from the original protozoans - even with the generous time framework of billions of years and as many alleged chance mutations.

  The apparent impotence of natural selection makes some sort of miraculous intervention essential.  There had to be strategic upgrades between every major life form and the next most complex organism.  According to natural selection, these were the products of random mutations that allowed species to improve over time.  Darwin ventured that enough of these progressive adaptions would eventually accumulate to change a plant or animal so much that it could be classified as a new, different organism.

   But probability says that's a stretch.  That seems so improbable to me that I might as well call it what it is: impossible.  The only way these significant changes could have occurred is with the activity of some outside creative source.  Charles Darwin drew his hypotheses in part from his observation of different varieties of finches in the Galapagos Islands, saying that a long series of minor changes could add up to the next distinct species.  To say this happened two or three times would be daring, to maintain that it happened thousands of times is nothing short of outlandish.

Differing food sources result in beak adaptations.

  Just a cursory study of the human body or the wildlife in the tropical rain forest or the miracle of a newborn baby is enough to make one suspicious of the notion that these things could come to exist by chance.

  So natural selection isn't ultimately about chance.  Because so many coincidences would have to take place in such a fantastic sequence that the whole process ends up being nothing short of miraculous.  It's way beyond chance.  If I flip a coin and it comes up heads, I could call it chance.  But if I flip it a thousand times and it comes up heads every time, it is not chance, it is a miracle.

  My skepticism of natural selection is the if-then operative that makes me conclude there must be a creator.  This stuff could not have happened without some sort of intelligent help, and lots of it.

  But I don't subscribe to the young earth creationist stuff either.  I don't think God was in a hurry to get the entire universe and everything assembled in six earth days.  I understand that this theory comes out of the desire to interpret the Bible literally, but it is not necessary in my thinking.  (Actually, nobody interprets the whole Bible literally.)

  If the universe is at least 13 billion years old, as astronomers say, and if the earth is at least 4 billion years old, as geologists say, then the creator is at least that old.  Why would he wait until just 7000 years ago to start putting together the solar system and the plant and animal kingdoms on the earth?  This idea is man-centered and earth-centered.

  There are many creation theories, and my favorite is one called the Day-Age Theory.  The premise is that the six days of creation described in Genesis 1 are not actual earth days, they are long ages of time, epochs, when a lot of adaptation could have taken place.  I can keep my scientific integrity intact with this theory, because it allows for the universe to be billions of years old and the earth to be really old too - without dethroning God.  It even allows for the possibility of prehistoric ancestors of homo sapiens (mankind), since it introduces the possibility that the creation account set forth in Genesis was really a re-creation ("...the earth became without form and empty..." Gen.1:2).  Maybe the account has a huge gap after the creation of the universe and then picks up again at the end of the last ice age for the re-creation (creative upgrading) of mankind and the plant and animal kingdoms.

Man and dinosaurs co-exist in displays at the creation museum.

  The Day-Age Theory also allows for the literary nature of scripture, the possibility that Moses' creation account was figurative, more like legend or folklore and was not meant to be scientific - or even historical for that matter.  This helps me with the discrepancies in the account, like the fact that the sun was formed on day four of creation.  Tell me what kind of "days" were the first three?  Earth days can't happen without the sun.

  So the more practical scenario I have settled on is a hybrid: Bob's Creationist - Evolutionary Theory.  And it is mostly based on logic and science but not without regard for the Bible.
  Because evolution needs to be turbo charged to get the job done.  And because creation doesn't need to be rushed.

  If you haven't done so, you really need to read the previous post for more scientific explanation about my problems with evolution.

My Problems with Evolutionary Theory

  I have a logical, scientific mind, and I have trouble with some of the assumptions made by evolution scientists.  Maybe I haven't read the right stuff yet and maybe I will happen upon some sensible explanations at some point, but here's where I am right now.

  First let me say that I don't have a problem with energy and matter and physics and astronomy and geology.  I believe the universe is really old.  Just last month astronomers reported the discovery of the farthest away, oldest galaxy (named z8_GND_5296) at the other side of the cosmos.  It is 13 billion light years away, making the universe at least that old.  The Big Bang that apparently started it all is entirely logical to me and consistent with what I see when I look up into the sky at night.  I am fully aware that what I see is not current but rather a snapshot of the universe the way it was millions and billions of years ago.

  Similarly, while I was in college my geological studies led me to conclude that the earth is millions of years old.  I could see it in the fossils and strata that I was digging up with my little rock hammer in the strip mines of southern Indiana and in the cut-away cliffs of the Rockies.

  So my problems are not with the physical sciences.  I am not a young earth theorist;  that doesn't make any sense to me.  At this point my fundamentalist creationist friends and I part company.

  But I'm also having trouble with some of the foundational biological premises of evolution.  Here's where my evolutionist friends and I part scientific company:

Problem #1:  You can't evolve if you can't reproduce.  Evolution requires time.  Lots of time.  Millions of years of evolutionary process must take place to deliver any noticeable change in a species.  And evolution also requires reproduction - lots of it - and right from the outset.  But if you can't reproduce, how can you evolve?  You don't have the luxury of millions of years to grow a male penis and then millions more years to develop a female vagina, and then millions of millennia to produce reproductive cells and everything else that goes with the reproductive systems, male and female.  It all has to be working in the first generation in order to have a second generation, if you know what I mean.  Excuse my explicit logic here, but if you can't procreate, you're screwed...  in a manner of speaking.  It doesn't require a whole lot of thought to arrive at the obvious conclusion that it is not possible for reproductive systems to evolve.  There must have been some creative point of origination when everything was suddenly working.  But is that still evolution?

  In the evolutionary sequence (called the Tree of Life) there is a huge gap between the slime molds and the duckbilled platypus, early ancestors of humans.  Somewhere in that gap sexual reproduction had to develop, and it had to show up all at once, along with a lot of other things.  This is a big problem, because natural selection does not have the balls for this; it is not a viable operative here.  Biologically speaking, natural selection can't get 'er done.

Problem #2:  Mutations can't close the gaps.  Natural selection (sometimes called the survival of the fittest) assumes that the positive adaptations of nature will live on to further evolve and the negative mutations will die out.  That's fine within species, but it seems pretty farfetched when trying to evolve from one life form to the next.  It is counterintuitive for me to concur with an evolutionary timeline that is a virtual continuum of development from lesser to greater, from simple to complex, from dumb to smart.  In my view, there's an insurmountable gap between every major family and the next higher life form. (See Hillis' completely sequenced genome Tree of Life here or Darwin's and several other early models here.)

A simplified version of evolutionary sequence called  Tree of Life

  On the contrary, a more panoramic observation reveals a slow decline of the biological world.  There are fewer species of plant and animal life on the earth now than there were last year or last epoch.  So the dinosaurs are gone, along with the dodo birds and a bunch of other cool stuff, gone forever.  Occasionally a scientist discovers a new butterfly in the Amazon jungle, but it is not really a new insect, just a newly discovered insect.  Many species are lost every year.  The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reports in their latest update to the Red List of Threatened Species, which reviews more than 60,000 species, that 25 per cent of mammals on the list are at risk of extinction.
In my mind, this points to a grand beginning and a slow diminishing of biodiversity.  Natural selection and the tree of life standing on its head, if you will.

Problem #3:  The Missing Links are still missing.  There should be transitional forms of every kind of organism in the fossil record.  But there aren't.  150 years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species (1859), they are still missing.  300-million-year-old fossils of the sea turtles show no significant variation from those alive in the ocean today.  Fossils exist of plants and animals that are now extinct, amazing things we have not seen before, but there have been found no viable transitional forms between the frog and the cat, the cat and the dog, the dog and the horse.  And there should be.  In fact, there should be millions upon millions of these "in-between" specimens embedded in the earth's crust, and with the thousands of archeologists who are on the job around the world, these should be emerging from the soil every day to be displayed in our newspapers, our science classrooms and our museums.  But they're not.

  Logically, this makes me think there was a definite point in time for the origination of each plant and animal group.

Problem #4:  DNA lacks creativity.  Adaptation falls short.  Adaptations can be the results of external forces applied on a particular life form.  So humans who lived in the tropics for many generations developed dark skin for their own protection.  And when they migrate to temperate climate zones they continue to birth babies with dark skin for many generations following, because of an essential change in the DNA when they lived in the tropics.

  But the original adaptation was a mutation, an adjustment to the DNA in response to an outside stimulus: sunlight.  This is the normal modus operandi for adaptations.

  But DNA do not have a mind of their own.  They are a reliable code or program that is automatically followed, usually without variation, a consistent phenomena called genetic homeostasis.  They cannot originate new body parts.  They cannot convene a committee and collaborate to develop an organ, a system or a sense, like the sense of sight, for example.  They cannot initiate a group effort to form an eyeball with a cornea, retina, optic nerve and eventually a center in the brain that interprets sight from nervous impulses - even though their blind host organism would certainly benefit from it if they could.  DNA are oblivious to the needs and wants of their host; they are not able to initiate these necessary monumental changes; they are barely able to react and adapt to outside stimuli and only do it infrequently and reluctantly through an occasional mutation.

  What I'm getting at here is that complex systems like digestion and breathing and circulation and the senses of sight and smell and so on, could not be generated by ignorant DNA.  Without the help of some miraculous, creative outside force, they cannot cause the countless improvements that are essential for the evolutionary process.

   Many evolutionists give examples of adaptations as proof of evolution, and indeed, it is essential to the entire scheme.  But adaptations never have and never will change one type of animal into another as evolutionary processes require.  Thousands of miraculous mutations - strategic upgrades - would have to take place for this to happen.  Yet this remains the foundational core of evolutionary theory.

  So I think that much of evolution science rides along on the backs of some very hopeful but unlikely hypotheses.  I have talked to some of my evolutionary friends about these fundamental gaps, and no one has offered explanations for any of this.  I guess maybe Charles Darwin could be excused for his optimism, hoping that science would eventually fill in the gaps, but I'm a bit more skeptical.  I am not comfortable with the cognitive dissonance that natural selection creates for me; it's just too fantastic.

  When my daughter came home from her first year at university she told me that her professor had said that, "Evolution has pretty much been proven by now."  My first thought was, "Really? When did that happen?"  Scientists don't even agree among themselves about the classifications of the simplest life forms.  In their search for the earliest universal ancestor evolutionary biologists are discovering that "...the emerging picture is far more complicated than had been expected, and the ancestor's features remain ill-defined.... Five years ago we were very confident and arrogant in our ignorance; said Dr. Eugene Loonin of the National Center for Biotechnology Information.  'Now we are starting to see the true complexity of life."*
  It seems that the more information that scientists gather, the less there is that they are certain of. (See also, Oldest Human DNA Reveals Mysterious Branch of Humanity for more speculation on human ancestry.)

  Post Script:  There is a battle continuing between creationists and evolutionists that is as unscientific as it is polarized.  I think part of the problem is the "package deal" that both sides are expected to embrace.  The creationists have a complete platform that they promote including an actual 6-day creation and a young earth (7000 years old) theory turned to dogma.  The evolutionists do the same, driven by the prerequisite that there be no intelligent creator in the equation.  And both sides have made their platform into a political and an emotional campaign.  Both sides overlook the obvious.

  When it comes to the origin of species, I am a man without a country, so to speak.   As you can see in this post, I do not subscribe to either traditional platform.  I think it is more reasonable to take an objective approach that is based on observation and real scientific evidence and without initial bias.

  My study and interest in this will be on-going, and I'm looking for facts. Conjecture is fine at the start.  That's where the scientific method begins.  But when reliable results aren't forthcoming after 150 years of study, it may be time to look for other answers.

  Also, please notice that I wrote this entire post in the first person.  That is an attempt to keep my friends from becoming offended and disowning me.  I respect the right of everybody to have their point of view, and I haven't made suggestions about what anyone else should believe about evolution; I have simply stated my own opinion.

Thank you for reading!

To make a comment or to suggest the next expert that I should study on the subject, click on "Post a Comment" below.  (There will be a delay before it is posted as I have to moderate all incoming comments.)  Thanks again!

* Nicholas Wade, The New York Times, article "Tree of Life Turns Out to Have Complex Roots".
   --Cartoons by Mueller and Ham, in The Funny Times, December 2013, Volume 28, Issue 12

I Went Back To Church Today

  I am happy to meet with my friends in their home - or the park or the ice cream shop - a couple of times a month and call it church.  I feel that my life is in pretty good balance with that level of involvement in spiritual gatherings.

  But today my wife and I took advantage of an opportunity to attend "regular church" with some of our family.  We went to a large suburban Baptist church where the music was trendy and loud, the atmosphere was informal, and the preaching was positive and encouraging.

  And I had a good time.  It was a positive experience for me, which is really saying something, because the first few times I visited a church after my traumatic exit from my local parish, the experience made me sick to my stomach.  Really.

  

  If you have read more than a couple of my blog posts you are aware that I am a critic of conservative evangelical institutions in America.  I think that much of what happens there is way off the mark of what God had in mind for his Body of believers.  You could probably randomly click on any selection in the left sidebar of this blog page and get an eyeful of my candid truth-telling assessment of denominational religion, based on my understanding of the New Testament.

  But today I saw the other side, the side that I haven't focused on much, the side that is not offensive to the culture and not offensive to the scriptures and most importantly, not offensive to Jesus.

  If you decide to go back to church, I suggest you look for a place like this:

• The atmosphere is relaxed and friendly, but not in-your-face welcoming.  They leave you alone to be a non-participating spectator if you want.  Nobody makes you raise your hands or say "Amen".  The apparel is a mix of faded jeans and 3-piece suits as if nobody really cares what you wear - or whether you have tattoos or body piercings, for that matter.  Nobody asks you to remove your hat if you wear one inside.  Little kids run back and forth and nobody stops them and scolds them about their irreverence for "God's temple."
• A church that respects the US constitution and its provision for the separation of church and state.  There is no mention of politics or the government, no alarmist warning about liberal politicians or the ubiquitous slippery slope.  No hyped-up challenge to somehow "take back America for God" (the "how-to" is always absent).
• There is no haranguing about giving.  Tithing is not forced, you are free to give or not to give without any expectation either way.  Finances seem to be handled responsibly and without a lot of waste.
• The property is modest and practical and is used efficiently by scheduling the same facilities for several different activities during the week (the church that I attended today has 1 worship service on Saturday night and 3 on Sunday morning and a variety of other venues during the week). Even better if the building is open to the public for walking and exercise, dance or karate classes, family reunions and other community events.  Stretch your donated dollar by using the resources as much as possible.
• The sermon is presented in a friendly and non-condemning manner.  It is not a dissertation on scriptural doctrine or denominational dogma, but rather a simple explanation of a spiritual idea leading to a practical application that is easily applied to the listener's everyday life.  It is grace-filled.
• The presenter is humble and an ordinary guy (or lady) who does not come off looking superior to the others in the room.  Even if he has an education and a divinity degree, his sermon is not grandiloquent or complicated.  The truths are not empowered by shouting or finger-pointing.  People do not leave the room feeling belittled or humiliated but rather encouraged.
• There are home groups or smaller venues that are conducive to discussion where you can ask questions.
• The essential hierarchy is invisible to the constituents.  Leaders don't seem to be in competition with each other or with the neighboring churches.

  Let me be clear about something:  The personality and demeanor of the pastor will make or break a church.  If he/she is mean and vindictive and uses the Bible as a weapon of mass destruction, there will be an abusive and toxic environment.  If you have experienced this at your local assembly, if you leave the meetings feeling a sense of condemnation, you should get yourself free immediately.

  On the other hand, if the leader is humble and grace-filled and magnanimous and servant-like, there will be health and spiritual vitality, and he will automatically be endowed with spiritual authority, much like Christ.  This is a good person to be around and from whom to receive spiritual food.

  Some of my acquaintances have said of me that I was "burned by the church".  Not so.  The church is made up of people.  I was burned by people.  People who had been my friends for decades, placed a higher value on the institution than they did on their relationship with me and with other individuals.  

  People are what's right with the church, and people are what's wrong with the church.

  There are at least two things about people that make them good or bad for the church:  One is bad doctrines that they believe and which govern their actions.  Bad doctrine can make good people do bad things.  The legalistic practice of the "submission to authority in the church" orthodoxy is an example of a bad doctrine that enables thousands of well-intentioned leaders to inadvertently construct environments of abuse and oppression.

  The other is bad character.  There are some people who simply should not lead others, because they have issues themselves that cause them to seek power and to dominate others.

  Add bad character to bad doctrine and you have a recipe for disaster (domineering men empowered by the doctrine of "submission to authority" wreak havoc throughout the Christian world).  Sadly, this is the norm in a lot of places.

  Fortunately, the church that I visited today was not like this.  It is led by a very intelligent but very down-to-earth young man who has a winsome personality and whose default interaction with people of all kinds is to declare their great worth by building them up and encouraging them, both through the fixtures of the local church and by his own respect for them as individuals.  He does not use the Bible as a bludgeon.

Ernesto Alaniz of Faith Baptist

  He was educated at Moody Bible College in Chicago, he is a big, lovable Tex-Mex-American named Ernesto Alaniz, and he is my son-in-law.  He is the campus pastor at Faith Baptist Church in Waterford, Michigan.

  If you want to go back to church, you should look for a non-condemning place like Faith Baptist that is led by an unassuming servant-type guy like Ernesto.  You should be safe there.

  Also, this is an independent church with no denominational alliances that can precipitate bad dictates from powerful characters in ivory towers.  Remember, power tends to corrupt.

   One other thing.  Pastors aren't the only ones who can set a poisonous tone in a local church.  The last four churches that have blown up in my neighborhood over the last four years were taken over by one or two power brokers, usually sitting on a governing board, who simply didn't like the pastor or the direction he was taking the church.  In most of these cases the district leaders caved in and sided with the dissidents, eventually ousting the pastors.  Hey, these folks are usually the ones holding the purse strings, like Judas, so the denominational leaders have little choice but to let them prevail ("If I don't get my way, I'll withhold my tithe or leave the church").  District leaders' livelihoods are dependent on the flow of funds from the local churches, so money steers logistics.

  There's good and there's bad in everything.  Seek a place with an abundance of good.  Good people and good practices.  Look for grace, love and respect.  If you don't see it in the leaders, don't go near the place.

Jesus was a Liberal

  Liberal means generous.  Jesus was generous.  His prevailing first reaction to a sinner is forgiveness.  Not judgement.  His response to the woman who was caught in the act of adultery was, "I don't condemn you," (John 8:11)  even though the Old Testament law ordered an execution by stoning.  Mercy prevailed over judgement.  Always.  This should give us a clue that, though it never came up during his ministry on earth, it's likely his reaction to gays would have been the same.  And to evolutionists, and abortionists - and politicians for that matter.

  As followers of Christ our prevailing approach to sinners should be the same.  "I don't condemn you."  And then pour on the love and the respect - and leave any follow-up admonition to the Lord through the Holy Spirit ("Now go and stop sinning").

  I have wondered what church or denomination Jesus would be the most likely to join if he lived on the earth again today.  Would he be a Presbyterian or a Baptist, a Wesleyan or a Catholic?  Would it be a group that we consider conservative?  Or liberal?

  I have concluded that he would be none of the above.  He wouldn't likely be part of a denomination of any kind.  He disdained the religious organization while on earth and reserved his most pointed criticisms for the religious leaders of the day, calling them sons of their father, the devil (John 8:44).  He might do the same if he were here now.  He would not be part of your church.  The institution of the church was not his idea (It was the emperor Constantine's idea).

  Jesus complained that the priests and Pharisees were using the scriptures to keep people out of heaven. (Matt 23:13)  Today's evangelists are no different: they use the scriptures to keep people out of heaven.

  He clearly banned the hierarchical structure for his disciples , telling them that they must not lord it over their people (Mark 10:42) but rather lead from behind (Matt 23:11, Mark 9:35).  And what do church leaders do today?  They lead from the front, lording it over their people through their hierarchical structure, claiming that a chain of command in the church is "God-ordained".  Nonsense, the only hierarchy ordained by God is that every member of the Body is answerable directly to the Head, which is Christ.

  Jesus clearly said we should not call any leader "pastor" or "father."(Matt 23:8-10)  Yet that's the accepted practice every time we address one of our clergy, feeding this idea that they are above us in some way.

  He said that his kingdom would be comprised of "living stones being built up into a spiritual house,"(I Peter 2:5)  but instead, we think God still dwells in temples made of brick and mortar and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on grand church buildings and meeting halls in every local parish, and then we hire "pastors" and "fathers" to lead us in style while we pay them salaries and provide them free housing and benefits.  I guess we are pretty liberal (generous) after all, since this scenario is entirely unbiblical.

  Jesus was  not interested in politics and rarely said anything about the government, and when he did, he showed respect toward civil authority.  (Wish some of your Facebook friends could be more like Christ in this way?)

  

  Well, maybe our contemporary Jesus, if not a denominational man, would be part of an independent house church.  After all, they have no hierarchy and no central leader - no pope or general superintendent.  They have no affiliations with any religious organization and don't even try to write up doctrinal statements and ordinances or bylaws.  Hmm, that sounds a lot like the New Testament house churches.  But Jesus was a predecessor to all that.

  Jesus was out and about all day every day, visiting from house to house and from town to town.  Of course there is no modern day counterpart, but if there were, I think he would be doing the same things as the original Jesus.

  His ministry would be characterized by humility, love and compassion.  He would help the poor and the hurting and pray for the sick wherever he found them.  He would provide food for the hungry - perhaps thousands at a time - out of concern for their welfare.  Yes, welfare.

  Yes, Jesus would be a liberal if he walked the earth today.  And he is walking the earth today, within you and me.  We are his dwelling place.

  So I want to be like Jesus:  I will be generous; I will be a liberal.  I will not judge, but only love people.  And I will help my needy neighbors when possible, and keep the main thing the main thing.  Love is the main thing.  Not righteousness or morality or conservative values.  Love.

  Oh, and since I really do seek to be like Jesus, I will criticize the religious institution and expose religious pride and the anti-Christ of legalism and oppression whenever and wherever I see it.  (I've been doing it for almost 3 years on this blog.)

  Thank you for reading.

  

  Have you ever thought about whether Jesus would want to be part of your church or denomination if he were here today?  What are some more reasons he would  or would not?

  

Backyard Baptism - The House Church Way

  My friends baptized their kids in a backyard swimming pool this afternoon and in my mind I couldn't help seeing visions of ancient New Testament believers being dunked in fountains and reflecting pools and rivers all across the middle eastern world as the gospel quickly spread across the region two thousand years ago... minus the cell phones and pocket cameras snatching their digital images instantly uploaded to the Cloud (gives new definition to the "cloud of witnesses").

A circuit-riding house pastor oversees the baptism of 2 kids by their parents in a backyard pool.

  But my visions were not only reminiscent of the past, for I also saw into the future as I was struck by the durability of the house church movement, the modern version being around since the 1800's but exploding with growth over the last ten years as the institutional church continues its God-ordained decline.

  My own exodus from the church is only four years old, but I am already aware of some of the long term benefits that the backyard festivities today brought to mind:

Freedom Reigns

  By far the most dominant characteristic of the movement outside the walls of the church is the freedom that dawns so brightly as the sun comes up the morning after another church refugee leaves the empire.

• Freedom from denominational dogma.  Liberated believers are free to shed the traditions and ordinations of the church.  There's no licensed legalist to tell them not to practice communion and baptism without an ordained minister on hand (although many house churches are attended by an abundance of former pastors).  I've even seen Mountain Dew and Ding Dongs used as communion sacraments and I don't think Jesus was the least bit upset about it.  Denominational doctrines are up for discussion in the home group.   It's just us, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit... and the internet.  No credentialed big shots telling us what we must believe.  If we want exegesis we go on line and read the latest blog from the scholars at Asbury or Moody or Wheaton.  In an instant we can learn and evaluate doctrines from the great theologians... if we care to know what any high-minded stuffed shirt thinks (because many of them don't seem to know much about grace).
• Freedom from condemnation.  Although it can take many years to purge the legalism and guilt out of one's soul, most freedom exiles start to loosen up as soon as they realize that there is nobody looking over their shoulders with a pointing finger or a disapproving  look (that is, after the fallout from the initial explosion has subsided a bit.  There is an inevitable sifting of friends and family members that follows an exodus, but it subsides with time).  Grace is the pervading attitude in the home group.  Non-condemning, nonjudgmental, let-me-be grace.
• Freedom from liturgy and protocol.  Would you like to have church at the ice cream shop?  Our group has done it several times.  We have also met at the park where we went for a one-hour run/walk before sitting down and dialoguing.  We don't meet on Sunday mornings, and we don't have worship time if we don't feel like it, and we don't have prayer before or after the offering... because there's no offering.  People get up and leave the discussion for more coffee or pizza and then come back a few minutes later... if they're not in the back yard leaning over the fence talking to the neighbor.  The institutions of the church vanish into the distance over time.  And the altar call?  What is that?
• Freedom from rhetoric.  Pious platitudes are a thing of the past.  The talking head (the sermon) is long gone.  Seminars and conferences don't exist.  We are all about conversation.  When's the last time you tried to interrupt your pastor's sermon with a question from the floor?  How did that work out for you?  It happens all the time in the home group.  Oh, the freedom of it all!

  A few years ago I heard a critic of the emerging church predict that the movement would be dead inside ten years.  The only problem with his statement was blind ignorance of the facts.  Recent studies indicate that it is the institutional church which in fact is declining and at faster rates every year.  Last month I heard a researcher report that the number of believers outside the church now outnumbers those still attending.

  Demonizing the movement won't stop the trend.  God will stop it when he wants to.  For the time being, it looks as though he wants to keep it going, perhaps until enough of us have been dumped outside the salt shaker and into the world where we he can finally do some good with us.

  

And the Band Played On...

  While the Titanic was sinking the band kept playing, even though there were people needing assistance getting into the lifeboats.  So it is today in the institutional church.

  My suggestion to my friends still playing in the band is to leave your post and help somebody escape.  Do it in small increments at first if you need to.  Miss church on one Sunday per month and hang out with a neighbor.  Go boating or fishing with a fellow employee at work.  Take your family on a Sunday adventure at the arcade or the movie theater.  Take a sabbatical from daily devotions for a month.  Give yourself a break from the fixtures of the institution.  Baptize your kids in the swimming pool.  Serve Mountain Dew and Ding Dongs (are they back on the market yet?) for communion at your next home Bible study.  Do something unconventional.  

  And just see if you feel a bit freer.  If not, go back to what you were doing if you want.  No problem.  No worries.  No condemnation.

  The work of Christ is freedom (Gal 5:1).  I love you, and I want you to be free.