It is amazing to me how much Americans are like the good Germans (98% to be exact) who rushed in the reign of Adolph Hitler. German Christians were also swept up in the hysteria. I cannot help but see how the masses of American evangelicals are just as easily impressed by success "as the measure and justification of all things." Thus, the larger a man's church gets the more credible he becomes whether his ideas or opinions are worthy or not. Thus, a man who is wealthy has "many friends" (as the ancient proverb says) and they all assume that he is a worthy leader. This happens in national politics as well as in the Church. But it's not automatic. Here's how Bonhoeffer put it:

In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of  Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity.  The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done. . . . With a frankness and off-handedness which no other earthly power could permit itself, history appeals in its own cause to the dictum and the end justifies the means. . . . The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.

We would like as many of our attenders to participate in a 12 session Bible Study that is probably different than any Bible study you have ever done. Instead of doing a book study with the book of a good Christian author or a topical study on a particularly relevant subject for Christian living, we are going to do something that I (Bob) believe is even more relevant to the Christian who wants to be a critical and analytical (but believing!) thinker. We want Christians to know how to use their Bibles for themselves. Thus, we are presenting to our congregation a study that has been honed and crafted over the years to instill five important pillars for the thoughtful Christian by using only the Bible. Here is a brief explanation of the five pillars:

1. Redemptive History. Throughout the twelve bible studies we will try to teach by example and instill an automatic instinct for discerning the paradigm-shifting worldview and storyline of redemptive history. Redemptive history is the record of all the events in history, recorded in the Bible, that are fulfilled in the Christ-work of God.

2. Inductive Research & Reasoning by learning fundamental skills for data-gathering and processing in our Bible study. Here we learn to customize bible notation and marking, what to highlight and what not to highlight, how to process all the information that we read in order to come up with sound and logical conclusions. On the premise that you find things you weren't looking for if you approach your search with specifics in mind I will try to show the participants that every Christian has the education and discipline necessary to do some exciting study for themselves.

3. Basics of Interpretation Consistent with Christian Tradition. We will learn the value of traditional Christian Creeds and Confessions as benchmarks, authoritative guides without absolute authority, to hedge in our interpretation of the Scripture. In other words, our interpretation of what we read in the Scripture must be informed by the Church. There is no private interpretation.

4. Gospel-specific Application Skills for Immediate Relevance We want to train our minds to read the Scriptures and hone in on the immediate (immanent)fact of Jesus in the particulars of our lives at home, work, play, and church.

5. Life-experience Fellowship. We want to learn to identify the sine qua non of Christian fellowship, the essentials. Turning away from a consumeristic understanding of fellowship to a theological understanding of fellowship has a wholesome psychological effect on the Christian thinker.

These Five Pillars of Christian Thought are not an exhaustive list, but they are fundamentals that need to be cultivated in any intelligent Christian who wants to be follow Christ. Please consider signing up for this bible study. You'll love it. We'll be all over the 66 books of the Bible!

I look forward to our moments together.

On their first missionary journey the Apostle Paul and Barnabas went into a region that was as non-Jew and pagan as any place they had been thus far. There they began their ministry by healing a man who had been lame his entire life and the city went crazy with enthusiastic joy. It seems that there was a legend in the land that gods had previously visited and only one couple was humble enough to receive them. These gods, Zeus and Hermes, rewarded the humble couple with great prosperity and punished the inhospitable villagers with poverty and difficulty. This was a mistake that the villagers of Lystra were not about to allow again. So with great pomp and circumstance they approached the messengers of Jesus Christ with a sacrificial offering. Paul and Barnabas recognized what was going on and immediately tore their clothes, a thing unbecoming of gods, and ran into the crowd to disrupt the worship service that was held in their honor. It was all quite dramatic. And we have a portion of Paul's message, perhaps the message in its entirety in Acts 14. He never gets around to introducing Jesus to the pagans. They want to stone him before he gets there, but there are three very important emphases in Paul's message that would do us well if we remembered them when ministering in our culture today.

We must have a proper understanding of Ourselves

The apostles tore their clothes, a strong visual message, to say that they were not gods. And they said something that was very remarkable for Jews to be saying to polytheistic pagans: "Men, we are just men like you wit the same nature that you have." This is less remarkable to us in our Westernized way of thinking, but that teachers of any ethnicity -- but particularly Jews! -- would voluntarily associate with the common man was something that made these messengers of God unique. In the same way, we should be very honest about who we are and not allow ourselves to think that our testimony among men is enhanced if they think we are better than we are.

We must have a proper understanding of our Objective

The apostles said that their objective was very simple. They wanted to tell the people the gospel of God so that people would turn from the "vain things" of prosperity and earthly comfort to the "living God." This is our ultimate object and it is difficult to to keep our focus. There are so many comforts that people are seeking and we are tempted to accommodate their desires to the point that we obscure the ultimate Comfort, God himself.

We must have a proper understanding of our Opposition

As soon as the crowd understood that Paul and Barnabas were not Zeus and Hermes they decided that these men should be stoned! Crowds are fickle! Even in the midst of adulation the apostles understood their crowd! They knew that the culture of the crowd had taught them to value prosperity and to do anything to protect their physical and material interests, even if it meant stoning people that would suggest that they ought to turn from "these vain things" to the "Living God."

We live in a similar culture. These three emphases in Paul's mini-sermon should help us as believers in the Gospel of Jesus. We are broken people just like everyone else but we believe that God is and the Rewarder of those who seek him. The world we live in will like us until they don't. It all depends on how they respond to the Gospel that God is better than what they want.

To hear Pastor Bob's recent sermon on this subject, go to the sermon link in the main menu and click on the sermon titled, "Cross-Cultural Evangelism." We hope that it will encourage and challenge you.

In their very readable work Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion Kevin DeYoung gives five arguments in defense of organized church as opposed to the ideas that are promoted by Frank Viola in his attack against organized church in Pagan Church. It doesn't take an academic to see that much of Viola's use of history and quotations are done in ways that would not pass if it were graded in college, but unfortunately the huge use of footnotes in his work has impressed many people already inclined to abandon church. I submit DeYoung's arguments here with limited comment.

I. "First, [Viola's] description of the usual Protestant worship service is grossly uncharitable. It would be one thing to argue for another option, but Viola insists that the worship in most of our churches is not simply lacking in some ways, but thoroughly unbiblical, pagan, and dreadfully dull. Are we really to believe that true biblical worship has been in hiatus for about two millennia and is just now getting a second chance with charismatic house-church meetings?"

II. "Second, we must keep in mind that the description of worship in 1 Corinthians 14 is not the only information we have on worship in the New Testament... The services at Corinth were not meant to provide a normative blueprint for Christian worship. IN fact, the reason we are given such detail about the gatherings in Corinth is because they were too free-flowing."

III. "Third, Jesus is not the head worship leader of the service as Viola argues (without evidence) numerous times. Jesus is the object of our worship, and Jesus ministers to us in worship. But the New Testament never suggests that Christ leads our services."

IV. "Fourth, many house-church proponents assume rather simplistically that informality is good and formality is bad. Of course, there are stilted liturgical services full of rote formality and dead traditionalism. But can nothing good come out of a well-structured, liturgical, more high-church service? In fact, one of the main critiques of evangelical worship, and the main reason people jump ship for Canterbury, Rome, or Greece, is because our worship lacks any kind of otherness. It's too much aw-shucks and 'Good morning everybody' with little to suggest that what we are gathered to do on Sunday morning is awe inspiring and set apart."

V. "Finally, Viola's reconstruction of the early church is hugely mistaken. The worship of the early church was simply not without ritual and structure."

DeYoung elaborates on each of these points and for those who are interested in finding out more, the chapter is will worth the read. My point here is simply to show that Viola's arguments, though very popular in evangelicalism, do not carry weight when put under any kind of thoughtful scrutiny. The problem, however, is that sometimes Christian leaders take it for granted that the problems are so obvious that they do not realize that many people within their own congregations are being taken in by the seemingly impressive logic of bad argumentation.

Some people complain that their ambitions are so much larger than what God wants them to do and they struggle nobly to yield to God. My problem is the opposite. I love my petty ambitions. God’s ambitions for me are too grandiose, far-reaching, over-the-top, and extravagant for my liking.

I want to

-write a book

-make a movie

-start five or six churches (some which grow to be very influential)

-give large sums to help the poor

-make friends with influential people in order to influence politics and movements

-preach to thousands

-serve and suffer spectacularly, modeling for God’s people what it is to take up one’s cross daily

-write a hymn

-be above average.

That kind of stuff.

Petty stuff.

It seems like God’s ambitions for me are more along these lines:

-befriend a discouraged person who has no influence

-high-five the little boy who has no dad

-speak up for the little girl who is being neglected by her parents at school and has no protection

-spend hours to write a personal letter to one individual who has not counselor to help him think through a spiritual problem

-make friends with the guy in the shop who’s opening up to me about his marriage because he has no person with whom he can be safely vulnerable

-open my doors to the lesbian because she has no Christian in her life

-advocate for the abuse victim because she has no advocate

-listen to the bitter and angry teen because he has no one that will listen to him

-be me because God has no other one to be uniquely and totally and unreservedly me

You know. Basically average Christian stuff.

These ambitions are too radical for me. To be joyfully average? That’s extreme. I mean, I know what history has indicated happens because of the joyfully average, but still. The story of God’s average people throughout history has revealed things like these:

-the befriended discouraged soul with no influence in turn influences someone who changes the world

-the little boy who has no dad grows up to be a model father

-the little girl who was not protected grows up to be a leader in school reform

-the person struggling with no counselor in turn counsels others with the very words that were shared with him and the stream of counsel trickles through generations

-the lesbian is freed from a one-dimensional understanding of Christianity because she has been loved by one who does not see her one-dimensionally

-the victim of abuse is given just enough hope to believe in eventual vindication and spreads the hope to other victims of abuse

-the angry teen eventually remembers that an adult listened to him and chooses to listen to his own angry teen

-and the millions of unknown Christians who have happily lived life just being who they are testify to the fullness of joy that comes to those who are unshackled from their petty ambitions for God and embrace his big ambitions for them in anonymous averageness.

But I want to do silly stuff instead. Now. God gives me a beach and I prefer my sandbox. Because in my sandbox I can be king. On the beach I’m just a kid dancing in the sunlight.

The kid dancing in the sunlight is the real me. And deep down I like that. If only I didn’t have such petty ambitions.

A Gardener with Scars.

The first Adam died in a garden. The Second Adam resurrected in a garden and he was mistaken for a gardener. Those with indomitable life appear so mundane.

This is one of the most remarkable features of Jesus Christ’s resurrection: his humility. The angels blazed with more brightness than he did post-resurrection. Jesus is still patiently waiting for his ultimate exaltation. Thus, those Christians who have death-defying life abiding in them still appear to an unbelieving world as merely regular; gardeners, gardeners with inexplicable scars. We are copies of our Elder Brother, the First Fruits of Resurrection, just ordinary people with the hidden glory of eternal life.

He is risen!

There is such a beautiful symmetry in the life of our Lord. It is as if there are bookends that mirror each other with thematic resemblance and frame the beginning and ending of the amazing life of Jesus of Nazareth.

Ephrem the Syrian noted this symmetry when he commented on the Triumphal Entry of Jesus. "He began with a manger and finished with a donkey, in Bethlehem with a manger, in Jerusalem with a donkey."

In the beginning of Jesus' life children played a dramatic role in the Massacre of of the Innocents. At the end of his life it was children who, again, played a dramatic role in shouting out the praises of God and waving palm branches.

Most remarkably, the glory of Jesus to draw all men to himself is seen in the beginning and end of his life. At the beginning, men from the East came asking, "Where is he who is born King of the Jews?" And at the end, men from the West came saying, "We would see Jesus."

Jesus' life is also a message, not just what he did and said. The fact of the incarnation is a powerful message, from beginning to end.

Perhaps the climax of the year for the church of Jesus Christ is Holy Week. Holy Week is the time that the church collectively sets aside to remember and celebrate the events surrounding the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. The highlights of the week are Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Resurrection Sunday (Easter).

This year, Redeemer Church will be meeting together with three other church to observe a special Good Friday Communion Service. These churches are Gracepoint Fellowship Church (Korean), Christian Telegu Church Fremont (Telegu), and Calvary Bible Church (English). We are excited to be celebrating Christ and the Gospel with these partner churches at the Roberts Avenue Project.

If you are in the Bay Area, consider joining together with us. Details below -

Address: 41354 Roberts Ave Fremont, CA 94538

Date: April 3

Time: 7:30pm

As a pastor one of the troubles that I have encountered among many sincere Christians is the guilt of "not having a great devotional life." I have tried very hard to free people of that guilt. There is nothing in the Word that requires daily Bible study or even reading. Prayer is our daily opportunity and, if we're tired, Jesus gently gives us the exact words to use or, if more energetic, an outline to follow in "The Lord's Prayer." But we have urged "personal devotions" and "God & I Time" to the point that the criticism of Gabriel Hebert should be considered.

We can encourage a devotionalism that is "manifestly for the élite, for the religiously gifted, for the few choice souls" which leaves "ordinary people out in the cold". We must have, instead, a paradigm of devotion that consecrates "the schoolboy's football and the shopkeeper's profits" and "we lose the essence of Christianity if we interpret it simply as a way of holiness, having for its end the salvation and the perfection of the individual soul. Personal religion, so interpreted, becomes a way of escape from the body by meditation and contemplation. But Christianity is the redemption of the body, and of common life, by the Divine action in the Incarnation."

Martyn-Lloyd Jones, the famous English pastor of the 20th century, once said that everyone should read their bibles every day except for mothers with toddlers! That wry concession admits human frailty even while it respects the hard work of motherhood.The old English Puritans said, rightly, that attending church was more important than personal bible reading. But our individualism has become a burden and we have lost appreciation for our communion with the saints. Time in the Word individually is a joy, a rare treat that most of God's people throughout the history of the Church have not had, not a duty. And if you can't get it in on any particular day, don't feel guilty. Be grateful you have a copy of God's Word with you; throughout the history of the Church most of God's people have never had their own copy of the Word and still don't.

So, if you have time to spend in daily bible time, glory in it. If you don't have the time, glory in the fact that you don't have to. Grace!