I just read this article that should disturb, nudge and prod us all. Entitled: “Author: More teens becoming ‘fake’ Christians” (yes, they could have come up with a better title than that), the piece argues that young people consistently abandon Christianity, at least in part because they don’t understand real Christianity in the first place.

Kenda Creasy Dean, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, warns that more and more American teenagers are embracing what she refers to as: “moralistic therapeutic deism,” which translates as:

a watered-down faith that portrays God as a “divine therapist” whose chief goal is to boost people’s self-esteem.

Dean concludes:

If this is the God they’re seeing in church, they are right to leave us in the dust. Churches don’t give them enough to be passionate about.

This should come as no surprise to anyone. Our young people embrace “moralistic therapeutic deism” because that’s what they’re parents have embraced, taught and lived. Our young people consistently leave the “church” when they have the chance because we have not given them a better story, we have not captured them with a better vision and we have not presented them with the real Jesus.

Re-capturing the hearts of our young people has nothing to do with being hip, contemporvant or relevant (see yesterday’s post). The fact that so many churches have tried this approach simply betrays the problem. We don’t love God enough. I know that sounds harsh and it paints with a very broad stroke, but the more I live in America, the longer I minister among America’s “Christians” the more I am convinced of this (except, of course for the people at Church of the Cross!) We are not enamored with God, so our young people become enamored with the world (much as we are).

Much of modern American Christianity is not about Jesus at all; it is about us. We are the center of the story. We are the point and the “gospel” is now that we deserve better treatment and things because God is gracious and wants the best for us. God becomes nothing more than a cosmic Santa Claus in a therapist’s chair, there when we need him, staying out of the way when we don’t.

Martin Luther famously said that there is no such thing as breaking only one of the Ten Commandments. That’s because if we break any of the last nine, it’s because we’ve already broken the first. We love ourselves inordinately because we don’t love God as we should. Interestingly, young people want “authenticity” (we can argue about what that actually means), and they want to be called to something greater than themselves. Our version of Christianity-lite provides neither, so they leave.

As C.S. Lewis famously said: “We are far too easily pleased.” Re-capturing our young people does not begin with our young people but in being re-captured by God.

• Read Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church by Kenda Creasy Dean

I’m not exactly sure when we started making video trailers for books, but here is one from Darrin Patrick for his upcoming book: Church Planter: The Man, the Message, the Mission

By now I’m sure that many of you have seen this video, but just in case, here is Mark Driscoll and Joshua Harris talking with Francis Chan about what’s next after Chan very publicly stepped away from his pulpit ministry:

We had the chance to take our four boys to Disneyland this past week. It was a great, fun trip (and we’re glad to be home!). Walking through those gates brought back childhood memories of going there with my parents. It was a surreal experience now taking my own children to a place my parents took me as a child.

Much to my wife’s chagrin, my cultural wheels never stop turning. I couldn’t help but marvel at how relevant they have kept most of the attractions. Yes, some of them feel a bit dated, but overall, Disney has done a great marketing job recycling their movies and keeping certain fables alive so that kids of all ages are able to share in an overall experience. I couldn’t help but think that it is often the most long-lasting things that are the most “relevant.” The Matterhorn, Mickey Mouse, etc.

Yet, Disney has not always done the best at relevance. I couldn’t help but think that some things made it into the park quite prematurely. Roger Rabbit, anyone? Not only have my kids never seen Roger Rabbit, I have no inclination to show it to them. It seems to me that Disney took a gamble at something that would become a meme and they lost. Yet, after however many millions of dollars it cost to put in that ride, they are now that much more reluctant to simply remove it. The result is an oddly out-of-place ride with a goofy Bugs Bunny rip-off and an inappropriate Jessica Rabbit character that I don’t want to expose my four young boys to just yet, much less at Disneyland.

There are certainly lessons here for the American Church. We race after this trend or that fad, forgetting that to chase relevance today is to ensure irrelevance tomorrow. We end up as the Roger Rabbit rides of the world; cool in 1988 and a laughing-stock now. It is the enduring that is always relevant. Relevance is not a question of immediate popularity but of lasting impact. Everyone knows Mickey Mouse and very few people care about Roger Rabbit. Everyone knows the Cross and very few people care about your contemporvance.

It is the churches that preach the Cross deeply and live joyful, sacrificial lives that will always be the most relevant. This is not the same thing as being immediately popular, nor should it be. We as jars of clay (2 Corinthians 4:7) hold, proclaim and live the power of God for salvation (Romans 1:16). What could be more relevant than that? Is that enough for us, or would we rather be the Roger Rabbits of culture?

One of the reasons that I feel Jim Belcher’s Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional is an important book is because it gives a voice to many guys, like myself who feel caught in the middle. I am not “traditional” (as Belcher identifies it), though I share many of their theological concerns. Nor am I “emergenting,” though I share some of their concerns.

One of the areas I feel the pinch of being caught “in between” is dialogical preaching. Doug Pagitt’s Preaching Re-Imagined: The Role of the Sermon in Communities of Faith has done us all a dis-service by coloring the way many people view dialogical preaching. Matt Chandler has summarized dialogical preaching as “going from nothing to nothing.” But this isn’t a fair presentation or an adequate consideration. Pagitt’s understanding and practice are world’s apart from, say, Soma Communities, who also practice dialogical preaching.

I wonder how much of our current understanding and practice of preaching is actually cultural. It seems to me that we have removed it from the synagogues in which it brewed and the Rabbinical teaching methods in which it marinated (both of which were heavy on dialogue). We actually have more biblical snapshots of dialogical teaching than we do of what we would consider “preaching.” The examples where an individual stood in front of a large crowd of primarily already-Believers and talked at them for 45 minutes to an hour without ever taking questions are few and far between, yet that is exactly what we have come to hold up as our tradition.In Acts 20, before the poor sleepy boy fell out of the window, we’re told that Paul “talked with them” (Acts 20:7). Acts 17:2 reminds us that it was Paul’s custom to “reason with them.” Ephesians 4:11-13 reminds us that it is the role of the teacher to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry rather than do it for them.

While I think there’s much more to be said (and that probably needs to be said) about some of the biblical foundations of dialogical preaching, that’s not my aim today. Instead, I hope to just clear up a bit of confusion. In other words: what are we even talking about?! Here are a couple of things to consider:

Dialogical preaching is not conversation: At least not in the way most conversations are conversations. Most conversations are two-sided in the sense that both parties (at least in theory) have equal rights to be heard. It’s a give and take. One party has the power to change the direction of the conversation at will. So, even though one participant may have intended the conversation to go one way, the other participant had other intentions and neither of them found resolution. They conversation didn’t go where either of them intended.

Dialogical preaching does include dialogue, yes. The preacher (and yes, he is still a preacher) does ask questions, elicits feedback and even interaction (GASP!) during the sermon, but the preacher also guides these questions and even the answers. That’s not to say he plants the answers, just that he has a very clear destination in mind (the point of the sermon) and if the dialogue gets off the tracks, it’s his job to put it back on the rail. Think the Socratic method.

Dialogical preaching is not an extended “tell me what you think this text means to you . . . ” jabfest. If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, chances are that you’ve been to some small group Bible study where the “leader” reads a passage and essentially asks the people what it means to them. The implication here is that there is no right or wrong answer, just what it means to you.

Dialogical preaching is built on sound exegesis. The foundation and even for the most part, the structure of the sermon are identical to most preaching. The preacher has done the hard work of exegesis and is aware that there are, in fact, wrong interpretations of the Bible. Remember above, when I said that the preacher had a clear destination in mind for the sermon, well, apply that here. Though I might ask our church family why an author included a particular line or phrase, the point is not to hear what people think but to equip them. So, good dialogical preaching is not afraid to tell someone that they’re wrong. Yes, you want to be polite about it, especially in a large group dynamic, but the point is to help people work through the passage on their own. So, you walk them through some of the exegetical steps, letting them see them for themselves.

Dialogical preaching is not just verbal “fill-in-the-blanks” sermon follow-alongs. In an attempt to “engage” the congregation, many pastors write up some fill-in-the-blank sermon outlines for people to follow along. Usually, this is meant to help the people follow along, grasp and remember the main points (not necessarily the main point, because these usually accompany bullet-point type sermons). Some people think of dialogical preaching as nothing more than this, except, instead of writing the points down, the people say them out loud.

Dialogical preaching might begin with some more fill-in-the-blank questions to get the people rolling, but if often goes for more application/implication oriented questions. For example, the preacher might ask: “What are some idols that you struggle with . . . ” This is clearly a penetrating question and not everyone is going to answer it out loud, but someone will and then someone else will realize they’re not alone in that struggle and someone else will see that the biblical truth applies to them in a way that they had never realized, but I’m getting ahead of myself. A preacher might ask: “Where are we as a church family succeeding in this/where are we failing/what might it look like for us and our surrounding community if this truth sank deep into our hearts, etc.” These questions are at a different level than the typical fill-in-the-blank sermon outline and when a person comes up with the answer on their own, it’s generally going to be more penetrating than the preacher telling them what their idol is our how we as a local church family fail at something. There is an ownership to biblical truth that is sometimes missing in monologue-preaching.

Though there is much more that can be and needs to be said, I’ll leave it at these two points for now because these are two of the most common pushbacks I receive to the idea of dialogical preaching. Hopefully this helps to clarify, at least a bit.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a blog post I wrote a while back for our church family: “Directional Alignment In Church Planting.” In that post, I suggested that, if I were to plant Church of the Cross over again, I would probably do it differently.

I think we are in a great place as far as corporate growth as a church family but in many ways, I feel like we put up the “structure” of what we thought church should be and then tried to fill it. We didn’t erect a building. But we went very early on to a Sunday morning gathering.

If I had it to do over again, I would postpone our Sunday morning gathering for a lot longer. I would lead with our Community Groups (Gospel Communities On Mission). I would let our Communities Groups be the organizing principle of Church of the Cross.

This is an interesting question for me as a pastor and now as a church planter. When I say “the organizing principle,” I mean, what do we emphasize the most, what do we rally around and around what do we organize; what receives the most of our time, attention and effort? Many churches organize around their Sunday morning gathering. They spend hours planning for it, it is a production, they use it to rally people and then send them to the “other things” that they as a local church do. Some churches organize around “Bible Study.” They really, really want their people to know a lot. Neither of these things are necessarily bad in and of themselves, I’m just not sure they’re really what we should be organizing around.

It’s good to worship and it’s good to know the Bible, but when we consider the fundamental task with which Jesus left His people, I can’t help but wonder how well these organizing principles have succeeded in making disciples who make disciples.

Our Community Groups are families of learning, serving missionaries striving to live the everyday rhythms of life with gospel intentionality (yes, there is much Soma Communities influence going on here). Disciples are made best in community, not just with knowledge or passive sitting and singing for an hour-and-a-half a week.

It’s often been said that what you win people with is what you win them to. In other words, if you attract people because you have the bigger, better, flashier Sunday morning production, you just have to keep getting bigger, better, and flashier because that’s what people come to expect and someone down the road would be happy to fill their seats with those butts.

But what we won people with families of learning, serving missionaries? What if we organized around gospel communities on mission?

On August 4, 2010 in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California’s voter-approved Proposition 8,  which provided “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California” sparking yet another round of controversy surrounding the definition of both marriage and equality. Paraphrasing Judge Walker’s ruling, he said that CA voters based their decision on the irrational belief in the inferiority of certain people, thus denying them certain rights.

The rhetoric is, of course, flying. One man on NPR lamented that it’s just “downright silly” that a professionally-trained judge can’t see what any little child can see; that “it takes a Mom and Dad” to be a family. On the other side, NPR featured a woman saying that the end of “Gay Apartheid” was finally in sight.

What are we to make of all of this, especially if we believe that the Bible identifies homosexuality as a sin and defines, as part of the creation mandate itself, marriage as the union of one man and one woman, which I do. Can we admit that, in a legal culture that defends the right to let your pants sag and underwear show as free speech, that, “rights” might need to be redefined?

I don’t get involved in a lot of politics and I don’t think that it’s the role of government to legislate morality. But I’ve been thinking all morning about Judge Walker’s assertion that CA voters hold irrational beliefs about gays and lesbians being inferior. I believe that homosexuality is a sin and that marriage is, by its very definition, the covenant union of a man and a woman but I do not believe that gays and lesbians are somehow inferior.

My point is not to isolate homosexuality as some “worse” sin while turning a blind eye to others. Nor is my point to particularly condemn those caught in the sin of homosexuality, for apart from God’s redeeming hand, none of us is righteous, none of us does good, none of us seeks God (Romans 3:9-18). We have all sinned (Romans 3:23) and we all need a Savior (1 Timothy 1:15). It makes me sad that we have communicated issues of sin in such a way that we are heard as saying that people struggling with a particular sin are somehow “inferior” while, since we do not struggle with that same sin, we are somehow “superior.” This is not a biblical sentiment in the slightest. But that is exactly how we are heard.

It certainly could be the case that identifying anyone as a sinner is perceived as judgmental and as a value statement on that person. After all, it is unavoidable to get into issues of “right” and “wrong” and who gets to say. But I wonder if the way we have chosen to communicate in many of these conversations has actually robbed our message of any meaning. We may say that homosexuality isn’t a greater sin than others but we don’t act that way. We may say that God calls us to love all people, but we rarely live that way.

The fact that we do not point the finger of sin against our own prejudices and judgments certainly makes it possible to hear us as saying that others are somehow inferior. But this misses the message of Grace. We are all sinners. None is superior to another and proclaiming sin is not a value judgment. But that’s exactly what we’ve done. History’s pages are certainly filled with people who have spoken the truth in anything but love. Homosexuality is a sin and we must proclaim such but we must not overlook our own sins in the process.