“We revere the Bible, but we don’t read it.”

This quote comes from George Gallup, who should know.

Tyndale House Publisher’s survey showed that 64% of Americans said they did not read the Bible because they’re too busy. 80% feel that the Scriptures are just too confusing and when they read the Bible, they don’t understand it. (The Baptist Standard, December 4, 2000)

There are many reasons why Christians today feel they’re too busy and that the Bible is too confusing to understand, but there are two that I feel the church is responsible for:

1) We’ve developed a consumer mentality in our churches.

I’m all for relevant Bible teaching. I think it’s a crime to bore people with the Word of God. And I’m all for seeker-sensitive cultures. I came to Christ during the Jesus Movement that was the ultimate seeker-sensitive revival.

But my concern is that in trying to make the church relevant and seeker-sensitive we’re listening to the wrong seekers. One of my first reactions when I attend a so-called “seeker” church is, “Show me the seeker!” Often we’re trying to please immature Christians with Sunday show-times that are more exciting than the “seeker” church down the road so that we can swell our numbers and our giving.

The last time I checked, discipleship was costly. And I’m a grace guy. I believe that eternal life is a gift freely given, but once we belong to Christ, He makes costly demands. And one of those demands is that we study His Word.

2) An overreaction to the postmodern generation.

What an arrogant lot we pastors and theologians are. We’ve decided for an entire generation that they’re too shallow, too ADD, and too Sesame-Street to sit still and actually study the Word of God.

Again, I’m all for doing whatever we need to reach the next generation. I’m a Jesus Movement rocker who was part of the generation that refused to dress up for Jesus and listen to religious elevator music.

But I’m in touch with many young and hip pastors who are filling up their churches with 20-Something’s hungry for the Word of God. My friend Britt Merrick leads one of the fastest growing movements in the world right now—Reality Churches. He teaches through the Bible, verse by verse, for 50 minutes every Sunday.

Could it be that some of the reason Americans feel they’re too busy to read the Word of God and that the Word of God is so confusing is because the pastors of America have ignored Paul’s command to Timothy to “Preach the Word”? (2 Timothy 4:2)

Questions: Do you think I’m overreacting? Would you rather have a shallow and fun church or a deep and challenging worship experience? 

I love the Beatles! But it bothers me that a survey of 1000 Americans reported that most of us can name the four Beatles, but few of us can recall even one of the Ten Commandments! (Kelton Research survey, 2007).

“Oh come on, Ed. You’re overreacting. That may be true of everyday Americans, but Christians in America know their Bible better than the Beatles.”

Really? Consider the findings of Gary Brudge, professor of New Testament studies at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. Wheaton is one of the most prestigious evangelical colleges in America. In an article published in Christianity Today in 1999, Burge exposes the depth of the problem of Biblical illiteracy among American youth with these statistics from a survey of incoming freshmen:

• 1/3 of the students could not put the following Biblical events in their proper order: Abraham, the Old Testament prophets, the death of Christ, and Pentecost.
• Half of them couldn’t remember who came first, Moses, Isaac, and Saul.
• 1/3 were unable to name the book of Acts as the book containing Paul’s missionary travels.
• 1/3 could not identify Matthew as an apostle from a random list of names.

These students represent the most churched and most committed demographic in America!

Paul, John, George and Ringo made some great music. Every song they ever wrote is on my iTunes. I’ve been listening to them for over forty years.

But it’s the writings of another Paul, Luke, Peter, and another John that have changed my life.

I hope you’ll join me as we journey through all 66 books of the Bible in 2012-13. Let’s do our part to improve the Biblical literacy of God’s people!

Questions: Honestly, how do you think you would have done on a test of your Biblical literacy? 

Recently, I spent a fascinating afternoon with one of my favorite authors, Randy Alcorn. I asked him, “What do you feel is the number one problem in the church today?” He didn’t hesitate. “Biblical illiteracy!” His answer is one of the main reasons I decided to dedicate two years to teaching Church of the Open Door the entire Bible. If you think Randy’s overstating the truth, consider this amazing contrast:

A June 2007 article in the Chicago Tribune reveals that Americans say they value the Bible:

• 25 million copies of the Bible are sold each year in America and the Bible is available in an embarrassing number of translations and paraphrases.
• A Gallup Poll reported that 75% of Americans believe the Bible is either the Word of God or inspired by the word of God.
• Americans spent $2.4 billion on Bibles and other religious books in 2006.

But, in spite of what we say, a December 2000 issue of the Baptist Standard reveals that we’re not reading the Bibles we buy:

• Another Gallup survey reports that fewer than half of Americans can name the first Book of the Bible (Genesis), only one-third know who delivered the Sermon on the Mount (a lot of responders named Billy Graham rather than Jesus), and one-fourth of all Americans don’t know why we celebrate Easter!
• A 1997 Barna Research poll showed 12% of Christians think Noah’s wife was Joan of Arc. 80% of “born-again Christians” believe the Bible says, “God helps those who help themselves.”

I can’t solve this problem in America. But I can make sure the Christians coming to Church of the Open Door or following this blog will know their Bible.

James I Packer said, “If I were the devil, one of my favorite aims would be to stop folks from digging into the Bible.”

I don’t want the devil to have his way in our community of faith.

Questions: Do you feel I’m overstating the problem? Do you feel the need to better understand the Bible? 

I take Paul’s exhortation to Timothy to “preach the Word” seriously. Beginning February 26th, I’m starting a new series, bible.cod, that will take us on a two-year journey through all 66 Books of the Bible

When Church of the Open Door began offering both a traditional service for those whose worship language was more hymns or praise songs with piano and organ, and a contemporary service for those who preferred more modern expressions of worship with guitars and drums, I made a big mistake. Assuming that newer believers and younger generations weren’t that interested in some of the deeper truths I had discovered in my studies, I dropped a lot of the “technical” and explanatory stuff when I taught the contemporary audience. I kind of summarized the in-depth teaching I was offering to the more traditional crowd.

Tom Townsend, our hip worship leader challenged me with these words, “You’re underestimating my generation. We want the Bible as much as anyone else. We love it when you offer insights from the Greek and Hebrew text and explain some of these difficult passages. We want you to preach the Word.”

I should have known better. Ours was the hippest revival in Church history and we couldn’t get enough of God’s Word. We listened to radio preachers like J. Vernon McGee, devoured books by great Bible teachers like Ray Stedman and Hal Lindsey, flocked to seminars and conferences featuring dynamic preachers like Howard Hendricks, Chuck Smith, and Josh McDowell. The truth of God’s Word guided our revival.

Many books and articles these days talk about the futility of preaching the Word. They claim to have statistical and experiential insights into the postmodern mind. But no one who is actually hanging around with postmodern Christians would say that God’s people have outlived their need for His Word.

Nothing convinced me of this more than the responses from readers of the original manuscript of my upcoming book, Reborn to Be Wild. People my age warned me against having too much content and too many biblical references. “The postmodern mind,” they told me, “just doesn’t learn that way.”

But actual postmodern readers said no. Surprisingly, they considered the heavy Scriptural emphasis one of the strong points of the manuscript. Bethany, a twenty-something recent graduate of a prestigious Christian undergrad program, wrote, “The strength of the book is that it teaches from the Bible and restates the things that God and Jesus already told us but that we want to contextualize into our own lives. I loved reading passage after passage that began with the Bible and led to Ed’s conclusions about how we live. In a lot of cases, I found myself being awed that I had never read the verses with their true meaning.”

Seems the Bible and its propositional truths aren’t as dated as the “experts” are telling us. If I was from the postmodern generation, I’d be a little ticked off that people so easily wrote me off as a self-absorbed, ADD, airhead who couldn’t read sentences anymore, and could only learn about Jesus through cleverly disguised entertainment.

As a Bible student, I want to ask, “Whatever happened to the Holy Spirit? Don’t you think He can reach their hearts with Scripture?”

What did He say?

I spine a lot of time in Mark in 2009—the fast-paced record of Jesus’ works and words.

The more I read and meditate, the more I identified with the disciples.

They spend their days walking along with Jesus as He does these spectacular miracles and says these wonderful sentences. And just when they think they have figured out their Master, He says something that turns them sideways.

“Hey, wait a minute Jesus. Are you saying that…

…you’re interested in these IRS guys and these prostitutes?”

…you love people who do the will of God more than your own mother?”

…we shouldn’t be afraid of these huge waves in this little boat?”

…we should tell these thousands of people that we’re going to feed them?”

…you’re really not interested in all these religious rules we grew up with?”

…rich people aren’t God’s favorites?”

…we can’t just make religious excuses to throw away our marriages?”

…we have to give up to gain, lose to win, serve to be great, suffer to follow?”

I know how they feel, don’t you?

Jesus said…

Jesus always tells me more than I can understand, but not as much as I want to know.

He tells me that somehow if I give my money to Him, I will end up with more to give to Him.

He tells me that if I love Judy with sacrificial love, I’ll receive the blessing.

He tells me that if I’m willing to suffer and serve, I’m on the road to true happiness.

He tells me that if I pay less attention to the people the world thinks are great and more attention to the powerless and poor, the homeless and hungry, the IRS agents and whores, I will make Him happy.

But Jesus didn’t say…

But He refuses to tell me exactly what He wants me to do today, or how to make sure that nothing goes wrong in my week, or how to avoid pain this year, or why He’s allowing our nation to become so wicked, or why some of my friends are sick and dying, or if He’s going to let me continue living with leukemia.

I guess that’s what it takes to follow the Living God who refuses to submit His power to my will: Trust!

The older I get, the more I feel like the desperate father who begged Jesus to deliver his tormented son. When Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes,” he responded honestly and in tears, “Lord I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)

Mommy, Daddy, Sammy

I was sure God was going to answer our prayer.

• Our leadership team, all abiders in Christ and claiming John 15:6, begged God to rescue our budget with a huge December.
• Following our Lord’s instructions on prayer (Matthew 6:5-13; 7:7-11; Luke 11:1-13; 18:1-5), we prayed specifically and persistently.
• We prayed alone, as couples, as families, in groups, and in community at all of our Christmas leadership events.
• Most of us fasted and prayed multiple times during December.

I was so sure that God would say yes to this prayer because usually He says yes when a request burdens our community in this way.

God Said No

He said no. Emphatically no. It wasn’t that He was testing us some to see if we would trust Him enough to move forward with a more robust budget in 2012 by giving us a partial yes. Our December giving didn’t even come close.

I’m devastated and my faith is shaken.

Like you, I don’t know what to do with no answers to my purest prayers when it seems I did everything right. I started doubting whether I really was abiding, if I was asking unselfishly enough, if maybe I was foolish to be so bold and public in leading our church in this prayer.

I came up with strategies to explain away the no. Some of that I’m sure was to protect the “reputation” of God, but a lot of it was simply to try to make sense of it myself.

And then, my grandson Zachy taught me a lesson on prayer.

Jesus rejoiced in the childlike faith of His disciples. Their excited reports of what God had done for them after their first missionary journey, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name” (Luke 10:17), elicits this response from the Master:

“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your gracious will” (Luke 10:21).

Zachy

Zachy was spending the night with us for the first time in his almost three years on earth Friday night. He had moved from a world of a lot of no’s (too many if his parents were to consult Judy and me!) to a world of yes’s. He got just about everything he wanted that night. Okay, I admit it. He got everything he wanted that night.

But then, when it came time to go to bed, his little heart broke. He cried and cried, saying only, “Mommy, Daddy, Sammy” over and over again. Finally, after an hour of comforting him and stroking his little back, he fell asleep with the whispered whimper, “Mommy, Daddy, Sammy.”

The next morning when mommy and daddy and brother Sammy came to pick him up, he ran into their arms and immediately asked them for something he couldn’t have.

They told him no. He protested. And then he asked again.

Children don’t care as much about yes’s as they do about relationship. They protest and throw fits when daddy says no, but what they most fear is being away from daddy…and mommy…and Sammy.

What a child wants most is the secure love of a parent and the familiar surroundings of the community of the family.

But they never stop asking!

The Measure of Faith

There’s my lesson. We tend to measure faith by adult behavior. God measures faith by childlike behavior.

I’m still begging my Father for more money to do the things we want to do for His Kingdom in 2012, but I’m not going to try to fine tune my prayers.

He’s given me what my redeemed heart longs for most: His unfailing love and strength, and a community of faith where I feel safe.

Just like Zachy, what we really want is the presence of our Father rather than His yes.

Question: When God says no to your prayers, do you tend toward more adult behavior of explanation or the childlike behavior of running to His arms and protesting His no?

How would you feel if your son or daughter enlisted in the military, and the next day the leaders of our country sent them to the frontlines of a brutal war to fight a cruel enemy?

I’m sure you would protest and wonder what the leaders were thinking. What kind of a leader sends an untrained soldier into war who doesn’t even know the basics of soldiering?

Capture that feeling in your heart and you would know how our Heavenly Father feels when church leaders send Christian soldiers into the battle for souls against the fierce forces of evil totally unprepared and untrained. They don’t know how to read their Bible, share the Good News, walk in the Spirit, or even how to recover when they fail.

But the Lord Jesus never meant for it to be this way. If church leaders would just read their marching orders in Matthew 28:18-20 they would know that their first priority is to make disciples—maturing followers of Christ who are battle-ready for the spiritual war that’s been raging since Satan deceived the woman and the man let it happen in the Garden.

This is why we begin every year at Church of the Open Door reminding ourselves of our commitment to the Great Commission—to make disciples of all nations. The day Church of the Open Door forgets this, is the day we become irrelevant to the work of God on earth.

“Invisible kingdoms are at war for the hearts and lives of every human being who walks the face of the earth.” Erwin McManus

This is the second half of a piece I read to the church on Easter of 2011: the raw truth about Church of the Open Door.

We’re Here to Tell You

We’re here to encourage you by telling you over and over again that the life you’ve been living is not the life Jesus wants you to have. To help you believe that you are worth far more than what the voices of this world tell you you’re worth.

We’re here to tell you that life is more than the weekly lineup of reality shows, the vacations you go on, the restaurants you eat in, the fine wine you drink, the golf courses you play on or the sports teams you follow.

We’re here to tell you that your worth is not limited or even defined by the car you drive, the home you live in, your fitness factor, your significant career, your education in a prestigious university, your political party, or your status in some sick codependent performance-based religious tradition.

We’re here to tell you that you do not need to medicate the pain of life with booze, drugs, exercise, materialism, portfolios, education, career, control, or even theology.

What We Know!

We know that we live in a world where few people keep their promises or remain faithful to anything or anyone. We want to introduce you to Jesus, who does keep His promises and will remain faithful. And we beg Him to strengthen us so that we can become the exception to your experience by keeping our promises to Him, you, and one another.

We know that you need a new vision for your life. We know from God’s Word and from personal experience with Christ that you do not have to hang onto this hurtful world with the death grip of someone who isn’t aware of a better option.

We know that you may feel like the better options are for others.

Donald Miller, in one of my favorite books, Blue Like Jazz, tells the story of a group of hostages taken by terrorists in a remote corner of the world and held there in a dark room for over a year. When the Navy Seals got to the building, opened the door and announced, “You’re rescued; you’re free. Come out into the light!” Not one of the hostages, huddled in a mass on the floor, moved a muscle. They had been in the dark for so long they didn’t believe in the light anymore. Or, like most of those who live outside the grace and mercy of God, didn’t think it was for them. So one of the seals took off his gear, got down on the floor, wrapped himself around the nearest hostage, held onto them tightly, whispering over and over and over, “It’s all right. You have been rescued. You’re safe. You’re free. You can walk out into the light.”

What We Want To Do

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Vision of a Church: The Choice

This is the time of year when a lot of pastors feel the pressure to announce some big vision for the coming year. I used to do that. But I stopped it a few years ago. It’s not that we don’t have plans and dreams. It’s not that we don’t have a theme for 2012. As I’ve written before in this blog, it’s bible.cod–studying every Book of the Bible in 2012-13. We even have a promise to go with it: You give us two years, and we’ll give you the Bible.

But does a church really need a vision in the same way a bank or a hospital needs a vision? What we need is the truth.

Leaders of churches have a choice. We can try to impress people by describing our church in glowing nuanced terms that present a picture of what we think people want to hear or what we secretly wish were true about our church. Or we can just tell the truth and trust God for the results.

I’m at the stage in life where I’d rather tell the truth. The truth is that a “perfect” church is not a healthy church because we all suspect what the leaders and God know—there’s a lot of stuff they’re not telling us. Spiritual health, by its very definition, insists on truth. Healthy churches admit that we’re struggling toward spiritual maturity together—that it’s a messy but wondrously redemptive process.

So, you want to know what’s really going on in the healthy community of faith we call Church of the Open Door? Here’s the raw truth—in all its messy glory!

The Raw Truth—What You’ll Discover

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