It’s interesting to think through some of the implicit assumptions we pick up along the path of life. Like that weirdly glinting rock that you couldn’t take your eyes off of it, so you put it in your pocket and them promptly forgot the reason it attracted you in the first place. The Christian life is one of growth and change. We are not the same people we once were. Nor are we now who we are yet to become. What’s best for us in one season of life may or may not be the right fit years later. It is also possible that we might not have been ready for that season, had it dawned earlier in life.

Certain things become fixtures for certain seasons of life. A certain church family might be a good fit, providing you with the challenge and growth you need for a certain phase of life, but you can’t imagine going back to it years later. And that’s OK. Because the Christian life is about growth. And just like you may need a certain church’s emphasis during a particular phase of life, not every local church is for every person.

Every local church has, for lack of a better way to put it, a “personality.” And not every local church is the best fit for every person. This was an interesting conclusion to come to as a church planter. The implicit (and sometimes explicit) advice is to get as many people as you can as quickly as you can and hold on to them for as long as you can. Because that’s “success,” right? Pardon my sarcasm.

But if the goal is to get as many people as you can as quickly as you can and hold on to them for as long as you can, then you will, by necessity, water-down your own vision in order to please as many people as possible. Thus, we have many church planters now pastoring churches they themselves might not even be a member of if it were up to them. Every local church has its own culture. There ought to be certain things that are universal to Christian communities:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, sacrificial love for one another, etc. But there are also millions of possible contextual variables from that point forth.

You are not best friends with just anyone. In fact, if you’re like most people, there are only a handful of people that you really connect deeply with in your lifetime. And everyone gravitates towards different people and that’s a beautiful thing because it celebrates the uniqueness of the personalities God has given us. But it’s not just that deep-level connection that is selective and unique. Not everyone line dances. Not everyone likes football. Not everyone crochets. Not everyone yodels. Not everyone likes NASCAR or American Pickers. Some people like Bob Dylan and some people like Prince and some people like both. So we clump with those who share our peculiar particulars. And that’s OK as long as we remember that our peculiarities are no better or worse than someone else’s, so let’s celebrate all the weirdness instead of judging other people’s pop culture weaknesses.

So we need to learn to know ourselves. And we must find environments where we are encouraged to truly become sanctified versions ourselves rather than watered-down versions of someone else. And not every person is going to find that in every local church. That doesn’t mean that if you just don’t like any of the churches in your area that you can sacrifice Christian community because all of your preferences aren’t being met. That’s selfish consumerism. You may have to make compromises to be in Christian community, but remember, it’s most likely just for a season of your life. The day will come when you can’t imagine going back to be a part of that church because you’ve grown so different from that time in your life. But that day also dawns with the realization that you would not be the person you are now without that time in your life.

So be thankful now. And let’s all become sanctified versions of ourselves rather than watered-down versions of someone else.

So, the other day I began what is sure to be a very long series of posts about some of the amazing people God has placed in my life. Let’s go ahead and visit another installment in that series, OK?

I met (THE) Shawn Skinner in April of 2008. My wife, Kristi and I flew from TX where I was pastoring, back to suburban Phoenix to have a vision-casting meeting for what would eventually become Church of the Cross. Shawn and I hit it off on many different levels and it wasn’t long before he began leading worship for our church family. And over the years, I have watched as God has gifted Shawn with his own musical voice.

Shawn recently played at Crescent Ballroom, one of my favorite Phoenix venues. I love seeing artists grow into themselves and this night was a prime example of just such a moment. And I’m not just saying that because Shawn is a good friend. If you’ll pardon my indulgence, I’d like to post three videos as proof of my claim that Shawn Skinner is certainly finding his musical voice.

Shawn opened up with a new song called “12 O’Clock Shuffle.” The parts that sound like he’s copying Tom Waits are actually supposed to be sung through this cool flask-o-phone (an actual flask that Shawn has turned into a microphone) that Shawn didn’t bring this night. So, he’s not just paying tribute to Waits, though that might not be a bad thing; he’s approximating the sound of the mic he didn’t bring. Anyway, watch right at around the 1:30 mark when Shawn offers an abrupt transition and a random crowd-goer shows his enthusiasm. You can see Shawn gain some confidence in that moment. And it never left him:

Next up is “You Better Not Miss,” a true story that Shawn turns into a haunting vignette:

Last up is a Shawn Skinner classic, “Charlie and William.” I love when the sound man adds some reverb to the refrain about three-quarters of the way through:

Watch for great things because I have no doubt Shawn can and will deliver.

“Christian Celebrity Culture” is such an odd phenomenon. Christian leaders putting themselves on display is certainly nothing new. Jesus intentionally incorporate His disciples into everyday life. Paul urged his readers to follow his pattern of life. I wonder how many of Paul’s readers read those words and thought things like “I’ll never match up to that! That Paul is too holy for me!” Or, how many in the original audience compared Paul’s place in life to their own: “We should all be like Paul! Why isn’t our church more like that?!”

There seems to be a glut of “missional” videos and sermons with people sharing stories of gospel transformation; at a personal and community level. While I love that the idea of living missionally is gaining exposure as a normative expectation of every Christian, I also worry that the flood of success stories has an unintended impact on many. It’s not uncommon for these success stories to breed discontent and sometimes even discouragement in local church families. We as individuals look at these videos and hear these stories and wonder why we don’t have exhilarating stories to share. And why doesn’t my church family look like that one? Why don’t my pastors look like those pastors. They must be doing something wrong. I need a church that lives like that. Stories that were meant to encourage and spur on, oftentimes actually discourage. Because we compare ourselves without the context of everyday life.

I wonder if that’s how Paul’s original audience took his audacious statement that they should imitate him as he imitated Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). Though it’s hard to know for sure, I doubt that Paul’s audience met this claim with the same discouragement of comparison that we meet celebrity Christian success stories with. I think there’s an important difference. In Philippians 4:9, Paul says: “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”

Notice: Paul says to practice not only what we’ve learned and received and heard, but seen. I can learn a lot of internet sermons. We now have unprecedented access to arguably some of the richest theological teachings ever, at the click of a button. I can listen to world renowned pastors and teachers. And I can easily begin to place them on a pedestal. And it’s not long before discouragement nips again at my heels. Why can’t I be more like them? But Paul says to practice what they’ve seen him do. I may be reading in to the text here, but I don’t think so: to see how Paul lived, they had to share life with him. His teachings were never removed from practice.

The next time you hear some of the conference and video missional success stories, listen for phrases like “Then one day . . . ” What we forget is that the churches, pastors and people in those videos are boiling down days, weeks, months and oftentime, years of perseverance into a single story. So, listen to these stories. Be encouraged that you too can live a missionary’s life in the everyday. But don’t compare yourself or your church to the polished product of a sermon illustration or professionally-produced video.

We must learn to redefine “wins” and “losses” in the grand scheme of things. Most of us are not going to have spontaneous baptisms and mass conversions as we go through our weeks. But we can live everyday life with Gospel intentionality.

One of the precepts of the Christian life is growth. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. One of the foundations of all of life is growth. If a baby doesn’t grow, we call it “failure to thrive” and it is a serious condition. It’s not normal or good when a baby doesn’t grow. We rightfully worry.

And yet, we’ve created a “christian culture” in which someone can be a “baby Christian” for 5, 10, 15. 20, . . . years and no one bats an eye. We may think, “well, they’re not growing as fast as others but who am I to judge?” So we have church buildings full of people who don’t pray; don’t read their bible; don’t live in sacrificial community; don’t love their neighbors, and in all reality, aren’t growing. True, who am I to judge anyone else’s soul, but if there is no growth, is there life?

We are not yet what we will be. But neither are we once were. In 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul says that we are “being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” In 1 Corinthians 13:11, Paul says that there is a time when we outgrow childish ways. In Ephesians 4, Paul says that as we grow in maturity (which is a community goal), we become more stable. Hebrews 5:14 tells us that as we grow, we gain more discernment. We are able, more and more, to tell what is good from what is evil.

And yet, at least in America, we marinate in consumerism. We are taught from an early age to expect to be served. So much so that I’m sure there are people who no longer know how to make coffee because you can buy it everywhere. We have imported consumerism into Christianity so much so that we can drop the phrase “church shopping” without thinking twice. We expect to be served (or at least “fed”). In consumerism, we learn to trust the retailers. We develop our own set of brand allegiances and we look to certain retailers as arbiters of our trusted brands. Why is there always a Lowes right across the street from Home Depot? Because some of us trust one while others trust the other.

But what happens when Christians, marinating in consumerism, hand discernment over to retailers? For many, “discernment,” the ability to determine good from evil, has simply become a point-of-purchase decision. I bought it at the “Christian” bookstore, it must be OK, right?! No. In any Christian bookstore, you can buy books by people who are not Christians. People who deny the resurrection. People who openly downplay sin. People who do not believe in the Trinity. I’m not being narrow and legalistic here. There are boundaries to Orthodoxy or everyone is a Christian. I’m just saying that you can walk into any Christian bookstore and buy works by authors who are clearly outside any traditionally accepted version of Orthodoxy. Books by people who are not Christians. And no one thinks twice.

So much of our Christianity separates the “professionals” the people who are paid to do ministry, from the rest of us. The Pastoral Staff are the ones who get paid to study and pass it one in bytes for the rest of us, right? I go to them when I have a problem because they’re equipped for that, not me. And it’s a Christian bookstore, so I can trust what’s inside.

Instead of teaching people to rely on “professional ministers,” making people dependent on pastors, local leaders should focus on equipping God’s people for everyday ministry (Ephesians 4:11-13). Discernment is not something we can hand over to the professionals (who don’t always have our best interest at heart), much less the retailers (who care even less about your soul, whether they are designated Christian or not). It is something we must hone ourselves in community.

Our system is perfectly designed to produce the results we’re getting. So we should not be surprised that American Christianity resembles the local shopping mall more often than the Kingdom of the Living Christ.

One of the phrases we use in the Church of the Cross family (borrowed from Jeff Vanderstelt) is “gospel fluency.” The idea isn’t new, but it has been important in the spiritual growth and development of many in our church family.

You know you’ve become fluent in a language when you no longer have to stop and translate in your mind. The language becomes natural and normal. You think in that language. What might change in our lives, and in our churches if we were “fluent” in the Gospel, the good news of who Jesus is and what He has done. What if we learned to speak/apply the Gospel to one another’s lives “in and out of season” and in all situations? As a Pastor, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that 85-90% of the Pastoral Counseling I do would go away. It would already be taken care of. Our church family would say to one another the things that I’m going to say to them anyways.

I think this is at the heart of what Paul means in Ephesians 4 when he says that we should “speak the truth to one another in love (v.15).” I think that this “speaking the truth to one another in love” is the “work of the ministry” that the saints are to be equipped for; applying the Gospel to our own and one another’s lives, learning to filter everything through the lens of who Jesus is and what He has done.

The Gospel, of course, is more than just getting our souls into heaven when we die. It is even more than (certainly not less than, but also certainly more than) substitutionary atonement (also see here and here). The Christian life is about becoming more and more immersed in these truths, being drawn closer to Jesus, becoming more dependent on Him, learning to listen to and depend on the Spirit in all of life. As Tim Keller might word it, the Gospel changed our motivational structures; why we do the things we do. This change, of course, rarely comes overnight, but it does happen for believers.

This is a crucial thing for followers of Jesus to consider. Why should we say no to sin? Why should we fight temptation? Our initial reaction to temptation and sin is that we shouldn’t. We shouldn’t choose sin. And, while this is technically true, if I tell a child that they shouldn’t touch the touch . . . well, you know. But, we all know from failed diet attempts and tries at life-reform that the best way to fight temptation is not with rules. It’s not by forcing ourselves to believe that we simply shouldn’t do something. Even if that’s true.

The best way to fight temptation is with a greater pleasure. If you have something that gives you greater pleasure, you won’t give in to temptation, not because you shouldn’t but because you don’t need to. Truth be told; we don’t love Jesus as much as we like to say we do. I realize that sounds harsh. I realize that many of us are arguing that point; I love Jesus more than anything else! And while we want this sentiment to be true, our lack of allegiance to Him betrays the fact that there are still things we believe will give us more pleasure/fulfillment/identity/security than Jesus. But false gods will never fail to fail us.

The problem has been keenly pinpointed by C.S. Lewis in his 1949 essay “The Weight of Glory:”

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

The Gospel motivates us not with “shouldn’t” but “needn’t.” We no longer need to chase after the things we once did because we have found deeper, truer pleasure/fulfillment/identity/security.

In his book One Thing, Sam Storms recounts the story of Jason and the Island of the Sirens. At one point, Odysseus knows that he must pass the island of the sirens. So he instructs his crew to plug their ears and then chains himself to the mast. He wanted to hear the song for himself. Had it not been for the chains holding him in place, his heart would have chased the sirens’ beautiful destruction. For many of us, our fight against sin is nothing more than those chains. It doesn’t nothing about our heart’s affections, just our external behaviors.

Yet, Jason also had to pass the island of the sirens. However, he took a different approach. Jason hired Orpheus, who was known to play the lyre so beautifully that it dimmed everything else. Jason and his crew didn’t even hear the sirens. Both men may have technically “beaten” the sirens, but Odysseus fought with “shouldn’t” and Jason fought with “needn’t.”

I wonder how many of us, when faced with temptation to sin actually fight it by saying that we don’t need to do that, or primarily that we “shouldn’t?” Which has been more powerful in your own life?

I recently had the privilege of writing a piece for Gospel Centered Discipleship about why we (Habañero Collective) host house shows (literally, concerts in our living rooms). One of the reasons is that, as Christians, we believe that culture is extremely important. It’s not my intent to go in to a fuller discussion of why that is at this point (if that’s something you’re interested in hearing, just ask).

Instead, I was contacted by a couple of people asking for further resources on the issue of Christianity and culture. So, in no particular order, are some of the books that have been helpful for me over the years. That’s not to say I entirely agree with everything in all of these books, but isn’t that part of the beauty of reading widely? Even if we don’t fully agree, we are sharpened when we engage with people of the same faith who have a different perspective.

If you’d like to know thoughts on a particular author or work, don’t hesitate to ask. This is in no way a comprehensive, or even ordered list; just some of the first recommendations that came to mind and I just wanted to pass along these resources before I forgot:

• Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch
• To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World by John Davison Hunter
• Plowing In Hope: Towards A Biblical Theology Of Culture by David Bruce Hegeman
• When The Kings Come Marching In:Isaiah and The New Jerusalem by Richard Mouw
• He Shines In All That’s Fair: Culture and Common Grace by Richard Mouw
• Calvinism In The Las Vegas Airport: Making Connections In Today’s World by Richard Mouw
• Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends (Cultural Exegesis) edited by Kevin Vanhoozer
• Public Faith, A: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good by Miroslav Volf
• The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission (Biblical Theology for Life) by Chrisopher J. H. Wright
• Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work by Tim Keller
• Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview by Albert Wolters
• Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile by Walter Brueggemann
• The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann
• He Speaks to Me Everywhere: Meditations on Christianity and Culture by Philip Graham Ryken
• Imagine: A Vision for Christians in the Arts by Steve Turner