inclusion

27
Oct
2025

All of God’s people are saints through faith

This week, people’s attention is focused on Halloween. Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve, was the evening before the Christian celebration of All Saints’ Day, or “All Hallows” in Old English. All Hallows’ Eve was sometimes called “Mischief Night,” when folks would “get together, have some fun, tell stories and have opportunities for bad behavior, a sort of licensed misrule.” However, English Heritage notes that All Hallows’ Eve also was a socially acceptable time “for poorer members of the community to visit their richer neighbors asking for charity.”[1]

Here on The Electric Gospel, I’d like to focus our thoughts this week on the festival of All Saints—and the understanding of who we are as saints. We are called, gathered, enlightened, and sanctified together with the whole Christian Church on earth, united by faith in Jesus Christ.

We believe in the communion of saints

by David Sellnow

The Bible tells us that the “prayer of a righteous person is powerfully effective” (James 5:16). With that being true, do you suppose a prayer said by Jesus, God’s own Son, is an effective prayer, obtaining the blessing which he asked for? Most certainly the Father answers Jesus’ prayers!

So what about this prayer, which Jesus offered while gathered with his disciples on the night before he died?  Jesus prayed for the future church, the church of believers which would come into being by means of the apostles’ writing and preaching. Jesus said:

  • “I pray … that they all may be one, even as you, Father, you are in me and I in you, that they may be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. The glory which you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one, I in them, and you in me, that they may be perfected into one, that the world may know that you sent me and loved them, even as you loved me”  (John 17:20-23).

Jesus prayed for all the church to be one, for all believers to be brought to complete unity.  Has this prayer of Jesus been answered?  Has this prayer of Jesus been powerful and effective? …  Does it seem sometimes that this prayer of Jesus has been ignored or denied?

One encyclopedic source lists approximately 300 branches of denominations within Christianity and adds, “This is not a complete list.”[2] The Center for the Study of Global Christianity breaks down the data more narrowly, to each individual group within those various branches and estimates as many as 47,000 specific denominations across the globe today.[3] Over the course of its history, Christianity has undergone various divisions and subdividions.  If Jesus’ prayer for unity has been heard and answered—if a prayer for Christian unity by the very Son of God was powerful and effective—how is it possible that Christianity can be divided into thousands of subgroups and splinter groups?  Is there indeed unity?  Are we any way one, as Jesus and the Father are one, as Jesus prayed?

If we are thinking that all Christians on earth must come together outwardly in one visible organization, one ecumenical church body, we miss the point of Jesus’ prayer. The unity for which Jesus prayed goes beyond anything our eyes can see. He wants us to be one in faith, which is deep within us. He wants us to be one in him and one with the Father and Spirit, which is a matter of the heart. Certainly it is a blessing too when visible gatherings of believers can be one together in their confession of faith, but the truest form of fellowship happens at a level even deeper than our outward expressions. The Lord knows those who are his, and assures us that there is indeed a body of believers that share one hope, one calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one  God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:4-6).

Here is a miracle: In spite of the fact that in this world we struggle to walk together and are torn and tempted and often divided, yet we have the Lord’s promise. All who, by his Spirit, are brought to believe in his name are united in that one name, and it is a perfect unity. It is a unity that goes beyond what is outer and surface and seen to what is inner and of the soul, unseen.  It is a unity whereby God can look upon a Lutheran and a Baptist and a Catholic and Russian Orthodox believer and—within all those whose hearts trust in Christ—God can and does create a unity that transcends anything we ever realize fully on this earth.  As much as we can realize it on earth, it is a witness to the rest of the world of the power of God’s message. Yet even when we find ourselves divided from one another by a number of different barriers between believers, we are confident that God is working his miracle of unity in our hearts. In the Apostles’ Creed, we confess that we believe in the holy, catholic (universal) church—the communion of saints. It is a miracle to believe it because we can’t so readily see it in the here and now. Yet we know it exists, for our Lord has promised it. And upon the last day, what has remained elusive to our eyes here will become vivid and glorious in the light of heaven. As Jesus put it in his prayer, “Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me be with me where I am, that they may see my glory which you have given me, for you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).  As believers, we will one day see Jesus in glory with ALL fellow believers, from whatever denomination they may come, as we join together in the heavenly circle of praise.  That choir will be as the apostle John later saw it in a vision:

  • “I looked, and behold: a great multitude which no man could count, out of every nation and of all tribes, peoples, and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, dressed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands. They cried with a loud voice:  ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Revelation 7:9-10).

By God’s grace, and only by God’s grace—not by our doing or our denominational affiliation or by any other human design or detail, but solely by God’s grace—we will be among that great throng of saints arrayed in gleaming robes and singing that never-ending refrain. Salvation belongs to God. Salvation comes from Christ. The prayer of Jesus, which we know is being answered already now, even though we have such a hard time seeing it, will become a prayer finalized in joyous fulfillment when all his people stand hand in hand, recognizing one another and praising their same Savior, one with each other and one with the Lord.  We press on earnestly today in faith, and await that fulfillment of faith together with all the saints.

Prayer:

  • Lord Jesus, gather the hearts of all your people on earth in unity with you and the Father, already today, even when we don’t see it well. Help us to be more united and unified as your people on earth, not at the expense of your truth but rather through your truth. Sanctify us by your truth; your word is truth. Keep all your believers—those whom you know are yours, those whose hearts are joined to you by faith—keep us all by your Spirit until the day we see one another in glory in your presence. Jesus, as your own bride, we your people long to be brought to our heavenly home, where we will stand in joy beside you. Amen.

From The Large Catechism of Martin Luther (1529):

  • There is upon earth a congregation of pure saints, under one head, Christ, called together by the Holy Spirit in one faith, one mind, and understanding, with manifold gifts, yet agreeing in love, without sects or schisms.I am also a part and member of the same, a sharer and joint owner of all the goods it possesses, brought to it and incorporated into it by the Holy Spirit by having heard and continuing to hear the Word of God. Until the last day, the Holy Spirit abides with the holy congregation (or Christendom), by means of which he fetches us to Christ and which he employs to teach and preach to us the Word, whereby he works and promotes sanctification, causing this this community daily to grow and become strong in the faith and its fruits.[4]

 

Bible quotations are from the World English Bible (public domain).

[1] https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/halloween-saints-souls/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations

[3] https://omsc.ptsem.edu/the-annual-statistical-table/

[4] https://bookofconcord.org/large-catechism/apostles-creed/

Posted by David Sellnow
15
Mar
2025

All God’s children have a voice

Each soul speaks in their own way

Today is the 11th anniversary of The Electric Gospel blog. (I hadn’t been paying attention last year, and missed marking the 10th anniversary.) This project started March 15, 2014, with a post from one of the ministry school students I was instructing. Allow me to share the origin story with you, which tells you something about this blog’s purpose.

In my classes, I encouraged students to compose devotional writings in their own voice and style. Much of the ministry training they received gave them templates and formulas they were told to follow. Their writings tended to be formulaic and stilted as a result. I wanted them to take in spiritual truths and express them in their own way, writing from their hearts. When they did, their expressions of faith spoke with grace and strength. I sent some of the most poignant pieces to the editors of the national church organization’s monthly magazine, and several students’ articles were published there.

One such student, Mariah, had dated someone who was controlling and overbearing. He maintained that male dominance in relationships was the biblically-commanded way. Mariah had a different perspective. She wrote about how this man had made her feel worthless and her gifts and talents unappreciated. When I sent Mariah’s article to be considered for publication by the national magazine, the assistant editors (both of them women) greatly appreciated her words. They put the article onto their schedule for an upcoming month’s issue. When it came time for the article to proceed to publication, I received communication from the magazine’s lead editor (a man). He had decided Mariah’s personal story needed editing. He provided his heavily altered rewrite of the article. He said that if the author agreed to the rewritten version, he would allow it in the magazine in that form. If she did not consent to the edited version, then the article would not be published. His version robbed Mariah’s original writing of her unique voice. It now sounded like it was composed by a staid, formal, traditional, clergy-trained man. It had become very much his writing, not hers—coming from his frame of reference, not hers. Mariah was hurt. She would not allow the magazine to run the editor’s version with her name listed as “author”—and I wholeheartedly supported her. I conveyed Mariah’s decision to the magazine editor, along with my own objections to how he had handled the matter. 

As Mariah and I talked, I said I’d start a place of my own online to feature selections of spiritual writing from students. I wanted Mariah’s article to be the first to be featured. She embraced the idea (not just for herself, but also for her fellow student writers). Thus, The Electric Gospel blogsite was born. 

You can read Mariah’s original piece here (just as she wrote it): “I Will Respect You.”

In those years of posting students’ work to the blog pages, I sought to give a forum to those who pressed against rigid expectations and situations that made them feel devalued.

There was a pre-seminary student who felt he wasn’t enough. He struggled to keep up with the college’s curriculum and to fit in with his classmates. When he stopped trying to compose something according to formulas dictated to him and wrote what he was feeling in his heart, his words sang with deep intensity.  (His article: “A Cry from the Depths of One’s Heart.”)

There was a devout woman from a Caribbean nation who came to the college, older than the typical college students around her. She experienced implicit bias and ageism and cliquishness on the campus, which kept her feeling like she didn’t belong (in a place where everyone should have felt embraced and welcomed). I urge you to read her impassioned plea: “Do We Really Love Each Other in the Church?”

In the years since I stopped teaching, I’ve used this blog as a place for some of my own writing. I’ve tried to highlight our imperative to value every individual, to listen to each person’s voice.  I’ll offer a couple of examples of past posts of mine here that might be worth your time to go back and read:

All of God’s children have a voice. Each soul speaks in their own special way. Hopefully this blog over the past 10+ years has been a place where the perspectives of Christ’s people from many walks of life have been honored and valued. 

****************

Do not think of yourself more highly than you should. Instead, be modest in your thinking, and judge yourself according to the amount of faith that God has given you. We have many parts in the one body, and all these parts have different functions. In the same way, though we are many, we are one body in union with Christ, and we are all joined to each other as different parts of one body. So we are to use our different gifts in accordance with the grace that God has given us. If our gift is to speak God’s message, we should do it according to the faith that we have (Romans 12:3-6—Good News Translation).

Posted by David Sellnow
22
Jul
2024

Called to be alongside of others

A message for the 9th Sunday after Pentecost

Sharing peace in Christ, leaving no one out 

by David Sellnow

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Texas_Tech_University,_Student_Union.jpg

In my early years of ministry, I led weekly Bible studies on campus for a student group at a large public university in Texas. Anybody was welcome to attend. One who began coming regularly was Linda, who was somewhat older than the traditional college-age students in the group. After attending for a couple of months, asking many questions herself and listening to the discussions I led with the group, Linda approached me after one of the evening sessions. She told me, “I’ve decided you’re not a cult leader.” “I’m glad to hear that!” I said. Linda explained she had spent over ten years of her life stuck in a thought-controlling cult. After getting out and getting reoriented, she became a cult interventionist, helping extricate others from similar situations. The religious body that was the parent church for our student organization had a reputation for fixed doctrines that everyone agreed to. That had been a red flag for Linda, and she had decided to investigate our group. Thankfully, I had passed the test and was not a cult leader. I wasn’t mind-controlling anyone or causing spiritual damage. We were digging in Scripture together and sharing thoughts openly and equally.

Sadly, there are religious leaders and religious organizations that dominate in ways that are abusive and harmful. Much research has been done into complex post-traumatic stress disorder, including religious trauma, when religious systems harm rather than help. It happens when individuals are made to feel fearful and trapped and depressed and lose who they are. They experience an erosion of their individual personality. They are compelled to conform themselves to the dictates and decisions and rules of the group (CPTSD Foundation). 

Not all stern, unbending churches are inflicting religious trauma in the formal sense of the term. But they may be ignoring the hurts and hopes and needs of many who are looking for good news and instead find mostly restrictions and legalisms.

I knew a young woman whose pastor preached that any and all forms of birth control were wrong. The young woman’s fiance had the same, unyielding view. As he and she talked about marriage, he insisted they should have as many babies as they could. Any attempts to limit that he saw as sin. The young woman was terrified, wondering if her body and mind and emotions could handle so much. Her pastor and her fiance were overemphasizing one thought in Scripture, that a man who has many children has been given a great blessing (cf. Psalm 127:3-5). They meanwhile were ignoring another Bible imperative, that husbands are to show consideration and concern for their wives and honor their needs of body, mind and spirit (cf. 1 Peter 3:7).

I knew young men and women who were training for roles in ministry in the church, who would not talk about internal struggles they had. If they had doubts or questions about any particular spiritual teachings, they were afraid to express them. If they experienced any mental health challenges, such as feeling anxious or depressed, they did not dare admit these things out loud. The church culture that surrounded them made them feel that any admission of weakness would disqualify them from ministry. They feared being dismissed from pre-ministry training because they weren’t good enough, weren’t strong enough, weren’t perfect enough to be pastors or teachers. Somehow they were forgetting the stories of all the human faith leaders we see in Scripture. Scripture openly shows the flaws and shortcomings of Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, Paul, and others whom God called into leadership. Good leaders lead through God’s strength, not their own (cf. Philippians 4:13). We don’t lead—and we are not disciples—because we are perfect people. 

Religious groups and religious leaders can lose that understanding and that humility. They can begin to view themselves as having a rightness that’s righter than others, a betterness that’s better than others. They overlook their own failings and inconsistencies and judge persons who don’t adhere to their rules as out of line, as less than, as falling short. 

These are the kinds of things that the LORD spoke against, through Jeremiah, saying, “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! … You have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them” (Jeremiah 23:1,2).

In One Coin Found: How God’s Love Stretches to the Margins,” Emmy Kegler points us to Jesus’ parable of the lost coin (Luke 15:8-10). She says, “The thing about coins is that they can’t get lost by themselves. They can’t roll away on their own. Coins get lost because their owners aren’t careful; whoever was in charge was wasteful with them. Coins get lost because they lose their shine, because dirt and rust cling to them, and without careful attention, they turn a color indistinguishable from dust and mess.”  Lost and dismayed and scattered souls are often in that condition because persons charged with responsibility in faith and religion have not kept their focus on God’s grace, have not maintained mercy in their preaching and their practice. As a result, people are cast aside—or they pull away because they are afraid, because they feel shamed and judged, because they are not led forward in hope and joy.

Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bob5d/16730007506

Do we do things in our own ministries and dealings with people that make others feel less than, as not properly in line? Are we more concerned about holding onto our own traditions than we are about welcoming others who have different backgrounds and different perspectives? Do we think of the church as our church, as if it belongs to us and anybody coming to us needs to fit in with our expectations and think the way we think? Do we put signs outside our churches and banners on our websites saying, “All are welcome,” but if folks come who aren’t the kind of people we were expecting to join us, make them feel unwelcome?

Back in the early days of the Christian church, the members who had been part of the Jewish traditions of faith did not easily adjust to having Gentiles joining the faith. The new Gentile Christians did not share the cultural context of Judaism, and often were made to feel like second-class citizens. The apostle Paul, who had described himself as the most enthusiastic proponent there could be of the Jewish faith (cf. Philippians 3:4-6), addressed that problem. In the church in Antioch (in Syria), he even confronted the Apostle Peter for going along with the standoffish behavior that Jewish Christians there were showing over against Gentile believers (cf. Galatians 2:11-21). In his letter to Gentile Christians in the Greek city of Ephesus, Paul reassured them that they were fully equal members of the church.  He wrote to them, “You were [once]  without Christ … aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise. … But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. He is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall between us. … You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:12-14,19).  Paul also strongly made this point:  Christ “has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace …. Through Christ all of us have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Ephesians 2:15,17-18). Jesus had fulfilled God’s laws for all of us. So laws and rules of the Jewish community were not to create a barrier to Gentile persons finding a spiritual home in the church. The church was not to have rules that made people change who they were in order to belong.

Nearly two thousand years have gone by since Paul wrote those words to Gentile Christians in what was then primarily a Jewish church. Today, do we Gentile Christians, with a long history and tradition in our practices of faith, need to hear the lesson Paul was teaching to Jewish traditionalists back in his day? Have we become so used to the church fabric and makeup as it has been that we don’t (or won’t) open our eyes to new people and new possibilities for the church in our own time? Do we truly welcome everyone, as Jesus welcomed everyone? Or are we sometimes too focused on ourselves to be full of caring and compassion for others?

Think of the ministry of Jesus. He labored with all his energy to reach out to every soul in need. At one time, when he and his disciples were exhausted from their work and had not even had time to eat, he said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while” (Mark 6:31). They decided to cross Lake Kinneret, but the crowds hurried on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them (Mark 6:32-33). What did Jesus do as he went ashore?  He saw the great crowd (over five thousand people),  “and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34). Tired as he was, he took the time to teach them, delivering words of comfort and hope. And along with his teaching, Jesus then also did a miracle of mercy, providing a meal of bread and fish for that whole crowd, more than they could even eat (cf. Mark 6:35-44).  We’re told of the general pattern of Jesus’ ministry that “wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed” (Mark 6:53-56). 

We are called by Jesus to carry on ministry in the same spirit as his ministry. Do you remember the woman who had been suffering for twelve years from hemorrhages, who said she just hoped to touch Jesus’ clothes and his power would heal her (Mark 5:25-34)? Do you remember the Syrophoenician woman, from outside of the children of Israel, who came to Jesus for help for her daughter, and said to him, “Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs” (Mark 7:28). People of all sorts and all needs reach out for love and acceptance and hope and help. They may not even be consciously reaching out toward the church. But they may be reaching out to you, if you are in their circle of acquaintance. Don’t look down on them. Don’t turn away from them—any of them, no matter who they are or what they are. Reach out to take their hand. Reach out to put an arm around their shoulder. Reach out as an ally to them, as an advocate for them, as a friend and partner.  If I may use a Greek word, be a “paraclete” to them. That’s a word that Jesus used when he promised to send us his Holy Spirit. Jesus said, “ I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete [Παράκλeτοß], to be with you forever. …  You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you” (John 14:16,17). The Greek word parakletos, literally translated, means one who is called to the side of another. Jesus has been that for us. God’s Spirit has been that for us. We are called to be that for one another, for our neighbors, for our friends, for strangers, for enemies, for everyone. 

We are not a cult, trying to control others and make them follow us without question and without thinking. We will not be like the shepherds Jeremiah described, who scatter and drive souls away in fear and trauma, rather than attending to them with care. We hope to be the sort of shepherds the LORD said he would raise up, providing a witness to God’s love and an embodiment of his grace, so that those whom we reach “shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing” (Jeremiah 23:4).  We will not demand people fabricate their own righteousness; rather we will point to the Savior God raised up in Jesus, whose very name by which he is called means: “The LORD is our righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:6).  We are the church, established by Jesus, being “built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God” (Ephesians 2:22)—and for all of his people.  Once we were not a people, but now we are God’s people; once we had not received mercy, but now we have received mercy (1 Peter 2:10). Christ, in his mercy, has called us alongside him that we might call others alongside us. We  proclaim the mighty acts of the one who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9). Let us be that light, in Christ, to all of our neighbors, near and far. 

For a related devotional thought, see this post on The Electric Gospel: https://theelectricgospel.com/the-house-of-disposable-souls/

Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Posted by David Sellnow
07
Aug
2023

Earthly needs, heavenly priorities

While we live amid everyday concerns, we yearn for eternity.  While we live in this world, we yearn for a better world to come. Having a focus on spiritual realities will guide how we live our lives and use our resources in the present, material world.

Earthly Needs, Heavenly Priorities

by David Sellnow

Sometimes comedians are the best truth-tellers.  They can look us in the eye and tell it like it is, because they make us laugh at ourselves and our fallibilities. In the 1980s, which scholars called “The Decade of Greed” or “The Decade of Excess,” sharp-tongued comedian George Carlin said it best. He got at all of us, not just the Wall Street traders and business tycoons. Carlin’s stand-up bit was called “A Place for My Stuff.” He said, “That’s the whole meaning of life, isn’t it? Trying to find a place for your stuff. That’s all your house is. Your house is just a place for your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house. You could just walk around all the time! Your house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff. And sometimes you gotta get a bigger house. Why? Too much stuff! Now you gotta move all your stuff, and maybe put some of your stuff in storage. Imagine that: there’s a whole industry based on keeping an eye on your extra stuff.”

It’s not the 1980s anymore, but Carlin’s diagnosis still rings true. We earthbound persons struggle to live spiritual lives because we have too much affinity for the earthly things –for lands and lawns, for houses and vehicles, for stuff and stuff and more stuff. We easily get attached to our stuff, and our lives tend to revolve around our stuff. That can get in the way of deeper things, of spiritual meaning, of soulful relationships with one another and with God.

Life in this world is a constant tension between that which is healthy and enriching for us as spiritual persons and that which appeals to our material needs and wants. Jesus described the field of this world as a mixture of weeds and wheat growing together, side by side (Matthew 13:38).  He also described how God’s life-giving word is spread across the world everywhere, but for many, it’s like seed sown among thorns. “The cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing” (Matthew 13:22). In each of our hearts there’s always a struggle between weeds and wheat, between invasive concerns of this life and productive fruit of a godly life. We are caught up in the daily struggles of a created world that has been “subjected to futility” and is “in bondage to decay” (Romans 8:20,21), while at the same time we are inspired by hopes that we have inwardly, longing for the redemption of our bodies in the resurrection, looking for eternal realities that we don’t yet see in the visible realm (cf. Romans 8:23-25).

It’s not that earthly things are bad. It’s a matter of keeping our perspectives in order. We can get so concerned about dollars and diamonds and dividends–things that seem to make this life secure–that we forget how insecure eternity can be if we don’t have God in our hearts. Having a piece of what seem rock-solid earthly investments won’t mean much when the earth gives way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea (Psalm 46:2). God has declared, “I am the first and I am the last… There is no other rock” (Isaiah 44:6,8). Even if a person could gain the whole world, what good is it if it costs him his very self, his life, his soul (Luke 9:25)? No earthly gain of any kind can ever compensate a person for the loss of life and soul, for the lack of a relationship with our Creator, our Lord.

The good Lord does know that we have daily needs. He is concerned about the well-being of our bodies as well as our souls. For example, consider a time when Jesus was personally in mourning, after he’d heard the news of how John the Baptist was murdered. Jesus went to a deserted place by himself to be alone, but the crowds of people did not leave him alone (Matthew 14:12-13). They followed on foot by the thousands, looking to him as their helper. Though he himself was in the midst of anguish caused by this world, Jesus could not look away from the troubles of the people who came to him. “He had compassion for them and cured their sick” (Matthew 14:14). Then, because they were in a deserted place and almost no one had brought food along, Jesus did a miracle to feed them all a meal. He multiplied five loaves of bread and two fish into enough food to feed “five thousand men, besides women and children” (Matthew 14:21)–so much of a miracle that they even had twelve baskets full of leftovers after everyone had eaten (Matthew 14:20).

There was a sad aftermath to that event, however. The crowds that experienced that miracle wanted to take Jesus by force to make him their king. They wanted a political icon, an economic savior here on this earth. Jesus had to pull away from them and go elsewhere. When the crowds chased him down and found him again the next day, Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (John 6:26,27). The people who clamored after Jesus needed him not just as their bread king, to make their bellies full and their lives comfortable. They needed him as their main source of sustenance, the true Bread of Life. Even if you get manna from heaven as a gift from God, that daily bread isn’t enough to sustain you. Jesus told those crowds, ”Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven” (John 6:49-51).  When Jesus said that, that claim was too much for most people. At that point, many of them turned away and stopped following Jesus, stopped listening to him (John 6:66). They wanted earthly ease and comfort from him. They weren’t in the mood for challenging spiritual realities.

It can be a delicate balance in our lives and in our ministries to maintain–between giving attention to day-to-day concerns and staying focused on our eternal calling.  We pray to the Lord for daily bread, that God would lead us to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving. At the same time, we pray, “Thy kingdom come,” asking God to give us his Holy Spirit, so that by his grace we believe his Word and lead godly lives (cf. Luther’s Small Catechism). Daily bread (meeting our bodily, earthly needs) is essential, but the higher calling of Christ’s kingdom puts all our daily affairs into perspective. His spiritual truths give depth and meaning to the day-to-day aspects of our lives.

People who are called to follow the Lord too easily get sidetracked from spiritual priorities. We can forget what’s important, can become self-important and self-indulgent. It’s hard to stay growing in healthy directions. It’s easy to become entangled, overgrown, unproductive. Weeds are always trying to creep into our own hearts. All churches in this world also will be both weeds and wheat, intermingled. Don’t be too eager to root out what you think is an unwanted plant or unwanted growth. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Even people who seem the most godly may have deep struggles of soul, and some who appear roughest around the edges may, in their hearts, be the closest to God. Don’t be too eager to push aside those you think have rejected the gospel or are unwilling to listen.  After Saul, the self-righteous Pharisee, was turned around to see God more fully, more truly, he did not turn his back on the people from whom he had come. As the apostle Paul, he deeply desired to bring others of his own people, steeped in the heritage of Judaism and the Hebrew scriptures, to see the life and beauty that is in Jesus, to know Jesus as the Messiah the scriptures had prophesied (cf. Romans 9:1-5). Paul toiled and struggled, with all the energy that God inspired in him, to reach out to both Jews and Gentiles, to both slaves and rulers, to everyone and anyone, to make the word of God fully known and reveal the mystery of Christ given for us and living in us (cf. Colossians 1:25-29). 

When we get caught up in the concerns of this world, we can forget that our mission is to everyone and anyone. In our personal lives, we can become more concerned about maintaining our own earthly comforts and neglect the others’ needs. In our church lives, we can become more concerned about preserving our own institutions and traditions than about the spiritual needs of others. We can unthinkingly place ourselves in a position of importance and crowd others out, making them feel unwelcome. Maybe we say all are welcome, but then if they come to us, we try to force them to be like us, think, like us, act like us. We fail to appreciate that God calls all kinds of people, with all kinds of perspectives, into the wide boundaries of his kingdom.

We also can make a mistake if we become so otherworldly that we ignore the everyday needs of those whom we would seek to serve in Christ. Remember that even though Jesus was drawing people to higher, spiritual priorities–and even though many of those following him seemed to want only mundane, earthly blessings from him–he still did not ignore their basic human needs. He healed the sick. He fed the hungry. He lent a hand to those who needed help to stand up, even while he was lifting souls up higher still to a heavenly hope and calling.

I’ve known some church organizations that were inconsistent in their approach to such things. Their stateside congregations very much avoided providing assistance programs to people in their communities. They said (with disapproval) that was “social gospel,” trying to fix and improve our present earthly society. They said the church’s concern should be with eternal things only. As a result, the communities in which these churches operated saw them as aloof, unresponsive, uncaring. Their ministries were stifled by their unwillingness to do what Jesus did, attending to the blind, the lame, the deaf, the sick, the poor (cf. Matthew 11:2-6), and caring “for orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27). They cared for their own, within their own congregations’ membership, but did not do so in wider outreach toward others outside, in their communities.

Yet, in foreign fields of work in developing nations, they attended to both the physical and spiritual needs of the people in the villages. They built wells for clean water. They established medical missions to provide healthcare. These things were in addition to and in conjunction with the churches they established and worship they held. That was the better model. When Christians and churches do such things because they truly are concerned about people’s whole lives, this is a sign of love moved by the gospel. Like Jesus’ miracles of love, these things will help people see what the gospel is and does within our hearts.

On the other hand, I’ve also sometimes seen congregations and church organizations offering things to the community just to hook people’s attention, while their real goal is building up their own church numbers. I’ve been at church meetings where it seemed the motivation for outreach was a desire to get more members in the building so they could balance their budget, pay the bills, keep their organization afloat. The same thing that can be said of us as individuals can be said of us as churches: Whoever wants to save their life–to preserve what they have in this world–will lose it, (Luke 9:24). If we are reaching out to others only for the sake of preserving our own institutions, we are losing our soul as a church. We dare not expect the blessing of God on such efforts. When we are willing to lose our lives for Christ and for the sake of the gospel, then we find blessing.

May God give to each of us and preserve in all of us a proper focus for our lives and for ministry. As Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6). Our primary hunger, our greatest need, is the hunger of the soul to have a satisfying relationship with the creator, to have the righteousness that comes from God. At the same time, we won’t neglect the needs of those who are hungry, those who are hurting, those who are homeless, those who are friendless. We will befriend our neighbors and community members in everyday ways, in unassuming ways, with ordinary blessings–genuinely aiming to help others, not promote ourselves. 

Hopefully we can become a little less attached to all our stuff and stuff and more stuff. Our lives do not consist of the abundance of our possessions (Luke 12:15).  We don’t live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).  So, let’s do what we can to share our bread, share our stuff … and share the words of Jesus and the love of Jesus and the spirit of Jesus with everyone we can. God help us to maintain both heavenly priorities of faith and earthly priorities toward our neighbors, in Jesus’ name.  

Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
05
Jun
2022

Teaching a Love for Souls

Pentecost Sunday, 2022

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Luke’s Pentecost narrative [Acts chapter 2] challenges the church today to find even more effective ways of communicating the gospel to peoples in every land on earth. … Just as the early Christians moved beyond the land of Israel and the Jewish people, so we must help all the peoples in our world hear and express the gospel in their own languages and according to their own cultural patterns. – Daniel J. Harrington, “The Challenge of Pentecost,” America (May 5, 2008)

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Many peoples, one God

The sign over the classroom door encouraged students’ eagerness: “Enter with an open mind.” Inside, though, an open-minded approach was not consistently encouraged. In this elementary classroom at a Christian school, religious lessons for the month were focused on the practices of other groups, organizations, and faiths (different from the affiliation of the parochial school).  The children would come home and tell their parents, “Do you know what this (or that) group believes? They’re so weird!” The lessons were teaching young denomination members to judge others. One of the assignments, mislabeled as an “evangelism exercise,” asked the children to compose a letter that they would send to Tom Cruise, trying to convince him of the dangers and evils of Scientology.

Certainly, God tells us to be wary of temptations and to steer clear of false teachings. Yet our call as evangelists (proclaimers of good news) is to be warm and winsome in our witness to others, to be models and messengers of the character of Christ. It is an unhappy consequence if education efforts lead us to become insular and narrow and focused on our own ways and practices. Our discipleship goal in the body of Christ is not to close minds and hearts or isolate ourselves from others in our communities. Rather, we seek to expand and enrich our own understanding and reach out to others with the truths we have come to know in Christ. 

The apostle Paul advised us, “From now on … regard no one from a human point of view” (2 Corinthians 5:16). We don’t calculate who might be more inclined to agree with us or who seems too different from us. We take a view that is open to the wide variety of persons in our world–all of whom are people for whom Jesus died and rose again. We don’t close ourselves off from the world around us or avoid those who seem “weird” to us. [Truthfully, we likely seem “weird” to them too.]  Our aim is to live in the world and impact the world by the testimony of lives in Jesus. We want to be seasoned by the Spirit to serve as the salt of the earth, to walk as children of the light to give off light to the world (cf. John 13:35-36). May we see ourselves (and teach our children to see themselves)  as ambassadors for Christ, imploring other’s on Christ’s behalf to be reconciled to God (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:20).  That will be our way of “praising God and having the goodwill of all the people” (Acts 2:47). 


A Pentecost prayer:

God of all the nations, we pray for your one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Praise to you for the great diversity present in the peoples, languages, rituals and practices of all people who follow you in the name of Jesus Christ. Turn us from fear of difference toward celebration. We pray for all people globally. Through the Spirit, grant us the power to be your disciples in the world. In our worship and in our work in the world, guide us to be good neighbors to our neighbors near and far. Free us from prejudice, that we may see your face in people around the world, through Jesus Christ, our Savior, and share his peace with all. (Adapted from Celebrate Global Ministries, Pentecost Sunday, 2017)

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Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
16
May
2022

Love for all, good news for all

A message for the 5th Sunday of Easter

“Love for All, Good News for All”

Readings to consider:  Acts 11:1-18, John 13:31-35


All along, God had made his mission clear. While God had chosen the nation of Israel to carry his promise until the promised Messiah came, his promise always was for everyone.  All people were to be told his good news and welcomed into God’s family through faith, hope, and love.  God described, through the prophet Isaiah, that it was too small a thing for the Messiah to be just for tribes of Jacob, the people of Israel. Rather, the Savior would be given as “a light to the nations,” for God’s salvation to “reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).  God’s people in Christ never have been defined on the basis of the blood running through their veins, but rather on faith in the promises of Christ that lives in their hearts. 

The earliest group of New Testament believers—the church that had gathered around Jesus’ message in Judea and Galilee—was a Jewish church.  As they shared the message of Jesus–how he had fulfilled all the long-awaited promises—their natural tendency was to share the message with other Jews, people like themselves. But the Lord showed Peter, one of the key leaders of the early church, that they needed to expand their vision.  

Peter’s vision by Domenico Fetti (1619)

God gave Peter a profound experience in a vision, then brought Peter to the household of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, to see faith in action there. Peter said to Cornelius and those with him, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality,  but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. … All the prophets testify about [Christ] that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:34,35.43). Peter witnessed a strong outpouring of God’s Spirit on the members of that Gentile household. They were people so different from Peter and his colleagues culturally, but they were united by faith as one in the name of Jesus.

If those early Jewish Christians, so deeply rooted in their unique customs and traditions, could begin reaching outside of their cultural community to people very much unlike themselves … what does that say to churches like ours today? We are people who have had the gospel for a long time, who have been blessed richly in our faith community.  But have we been a bit slow, a bit reluctant, a bit hesitant, about speaking of salvation outside of our comfort zone, outside of the rather narrow circles in which our paths usually run?  

Think about the vision God gave Peter–a vision of all kinds of animals for food that would be unthinkable for a Jewish person observing a kosher diet. The vision was about much more than cultural diet laws, though. Peter came to understand God’s essential point–“What God has made clean, you must not call profane” (Acts 11:9)–meant that we should not call any person profane or unclean (cf. Acts 10:28).  Do we tend to think of some persons as unclean, unsuitable, unwelcome alongside us in God’s family?  Do we look at people whose ways are different from ours, or whose background is different from ours, or whose lifestyle is different from ours, and completely overlook them as souls with whom to share God’s love and hope and truth?

God wants us to reach out more boldly, more widely with his good news—not just to people like ourselves, but also to people dramatically different from us.  Otherwise we are putting limits on the love of Jesus. When Jesus said, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34), he wasn’t telling us to love only those already inside our fellowship within the church. Jesus’ call to “have love for one another” (John 13:35) encompasses every other person around us, every fellow human being. Jesus emphasized, as one of the greatest commandments: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). And do you recall how a religious lawyer tried to wriggle away from that responsibility by saying, “And who is my neighbor” (Luke 10:29)?  Jesus responded with the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-35), referring to a people group that Jewish lawyer detested and would have gone out of his way to avoid.  Jesus made quite clear that someone who shows mercy to his fellow human beings–every fellow human being–is the one fulfilling the law of love as a true “neighbor” (cf. Luke 10:37, Romans 13:8-10).

Allow me to share a couple of examples that illustrate how we can be too inclined to limit ourselves and our outreach with the gospel.

A number of years ago, I did a ministry internship in one of America’s largest cities.  The congregations of the metro area were planning expansion, looking at locations for planting additional churches.  I was assigned to do demographic research, to find out which portions of the urban sprawl were projected for population expansion.  This would give cues about where future church work might be warranted.  I didn’t really know the city yet; to me, the research was simply a matter of maps and statistics.  The area I suggested deserved immediate attention, because of swelling numbers of residents, turned out to be a section of slums.  Others on the planning committee looked at me incredulously.  “Put a church where?”  Their pattern had been to put churches in the suburbs, in affluent neighborhoods, so that the ministry efforts could be paid for by offerings from the people who came. The mission planners asked, “How could we afford to start a ministry where the people had no money to support it?” That seemed to go against the spirit of what sharing God’s grace and goodness is meant to look like.* Yes, as we bring others to the gospel, we will urge them to become supporters of gospel ministry themselves. But when the apostle Paul was doing outreach and starting new churches, he made a point not to accept money from people. As he put it, he and his missionary colleagues did not want to put any “an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:12).  A policy of doing outreach only where it seemed the efforts could be financially self-supporting was a form of structural discrimination, neglecting poorer populations who needed gospel love as much as anyone. Such a policy risks Jesus saying to us, “Just as you did not help the least of these who are members of my family, you did not help me” (cf. Matthew 25:40,45). Rather than viewing prospective audiences for the gospel from a worldly point of view, we are called to be “ambassadors for Christ” (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:16-20), reaching out to all persons, without making distinctions. 

Or another story.**  A church had just had summertime Vacation Bible School (VBS).  One young mother had brought her two boys to VBS.  She also babysat another boy who lived in the same apartment complex.  She had asked that boy’s mother if she could bring him to the VBS too, and so she did.

That little boy, who was 5 years old, enjoyed VBS so much that he went home and told his mother, “I want to go to school there all the time!”  [The church had a Lutheran elementary school, starting with kindergarten.]  So the boy’s mother asked about enrolling him for the fall.

The boy’s mother—we’ll call her Sally—was a working mom.  Her profession was the oldest one around, as they say.  She had made her living as a prostitute; had made enough, in fact, to buy the business from … well, we’ll call him the ‘previous owner.’   So now Sally was the proprietor or “madam” for a number of “working girls.”

The church had a policy that any parents who wished to enroll children in its school needed to enroll themselves in a Bible study course.  Sally agreed with that; she said she’d be glad to take the Bible course if they could work it around her schedule.  So, at the next meeting of the congregation’s board of education, the pastor and the ministry intern brought forward the recommendation for Sally’s son to be enrolled in the school … and told them what the woman did for a living.

The school board members panicked.  They erupted with questions:

  • “Pastor, do you really want us to enroll this child in our school?”
  • “Are you sure the mother actually will take the Bible classes?” 
  • “What effect will this child’s presence in our school have on the other children?”
  • “Won’t this cause worries for other parents?”
  • “How can we expect support at home with Bible homework or principles of Christian living when the mother’s life is so at odds with our church’s moral principles?”

The members of that church’s school board were faithful, believing Christians.  But their gut reaction was not from an attitude of new life in Christ.  The pastor reminded them of how Jesus’ own ministry reached out to prostitutes and other public sinners. Still, though, they struggled to get past their aversions.  Each of us typically has the same aversions.   Our thought process is something like, “Well, yes, I know prostitutes and drug addicts and alcoholics and ex-convicts all need to hear the gospel … but do they have to do it in our church?”

Eventually, the Christian love in the hearts of the members of that church committee rose to the occasion.  They talked about the spiritual welfare of the child and how it was unthinkable to turn him away from the gospel he so loved when he heard it at VBS.  They talked about a mother who, in spite of her personal history, was willing to listen to Bible teaching—and about trusting the dynamic power of the gospel’s teaching.  So Sally’s son was enrolled in school, and Sally was enrolled in a Bible information class.  Long story short, not only was Sally’s son nurtured in the good news of Jesus, but also Sally herself was brought to faith and made changes in her life. 

May our attitude as Christians be inspired by the goodness the Lord has shown to us. May we be big-hearted and open-armed and opportunistic when it comes to declaring the praises of him who has called us “out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).  May we not be content declaring God’s name only to persons with whom we feel a sort of safeness, people who look like us or act like us or come from the same sort of background as us.  May we be bold to extend our hands and express our beliefs also to those very different from ourselves—whether that means different racial or ethnic backgrounds, or different religious backgrounds, or different moral backgrounds.  Because, in the end, as human beings, we all came from the same background of needing God in our lives. We ought not think of ourselves as somehow better than others, somehow more deserving than others, somehow more inherently righteous than others. We all do well to say, in a paraphrase of St. Paul, “There, but for the grace of God, go I” (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:9-10). Or, to quote Paul directly from one of his epistles, “There is no distinction [between us], since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God [and] are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:22-24).

That is the message we seek to share, across every human barrier that exists. God’s love is for all. Christ’s good news is for all. We will share that love and good news with all. May God give us eagerness and energy to extend his grace and support the spread of his Word to everyone everywhere. 

Prayer:  “Lord speak to us, that we may speak in living echoes of your tone. As you have sought, so let us seek your straying children, lost and lone” (Evangelical Lutheran Worship 676:1).  Amen.

*This story was previously published in Faith Lives in Our Actions by David Sellnow, available on Amazon.com.

**A version of this story, expanded from the actual events, was included in the book, The Lord Cares for Me, by David Sellnow, available on Amazon.com.

Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Posted by David Sellnow
06
Feb
2022

Keep fishing

for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany
David Sellnow

Christ calls us to reach out to others, even when it seems an impossible task

If you are a church member, you recently became part of a minority in America. For the first time, the percentage of Americans who belong to a church or synagogue or mosque fell below 50%.  When Gallup did its first poll about church membership in 1937, 73% of Americans said they belonged to a church. That number remained consistently around 70% up to 1999. Since then, the numbers have dropped precipitously, down to 60% by 2010, down to 47% as of 2020. (1)  Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion has grown from 8% in 2000 to 13% in 2010 to 21% by 2020.  In the United States overall, persons who attend church regularly represent 24% of the population, compared to 29% who never attend religious services at all. (2)

In broader terms, you’re not a minority yet, but your majority status is shrinking. Apart from church membership or attendance, how do people see themselves? Fifteen years ago, for every person in this country saying they were non-religious, there were five persons who professed to be Christians. Today, for each non-religious person, there are maybe two Christians as their neighbors in the community. (3)

Jacopo Bassano, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, National Gallery of Art, via Wikimedia Commons

I hope such news doesn’t make you uncomfortable. I hope, rather, that it makes you feel like going fishing. I don’t mean giving up on your religious life and spending all your time at the lake. Quite the opposite—I mean that we devote ourselves to living the faith in the way Jesus called us to be “fishers” of men and women. We learn something about our calling from way Jesus called his first disciples–fishermen by trade–to come follow him (cf. Luke 5:1-11). After a long night out on the lake, catching nothing, Jesus told Simon Peter and his colleagues to go out again and let down their nets–in deep water and in broad daylight.  This was not how Galilean fishermen approached their work.  They used trammel nets near the surface. In deep water, the fish would typically not be within their reach. (4)  Also, until the introduction of transparent nylon nets in the 20th century, “trammel net fishing was done only at night. In the daytime, the fish could see the nets and avoid them.” (5)

So, when the fishing partners caught so many fish that their nets began to break (Luke 5:6), with loads of fish so heavy they barely could keep their boats afloat, this clearly was a miracle of Jesus’ doing. It also was an object lesson in what “fishing” is like for us in a spiritual sense. Fishing isn’t easy. It takes great patience and persistence. Sometimes you can fish and fish and fish and catch nothing. Sometimes the fish just aren’t biting, no matter what lure or bait or method you’re using. Bringing others into the family of Jesus is like that. You can do outreach effort after outreach effort, and nobody seems to respond. You try every traditional method you know to do ministry and evangelism, but people from the community aren’t interested. On that day at Lake Gennesaret, it took a miracle by Jesus to bring fish into the nets of Peter and the other fishermen. On any day that we seek to bring a person’s soul into the arms of our Savior, it takes a miracle of God’s Spirit to make that change happen.  After all, “no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3).

Perhaps many decades of cultural dominance by Christianity in America have made us think ministry should be easy. Historically and globally, that has not been the usual situation for witnesses of the gospel. In the present day, the world watch list details the fifty countries around the world where being a Christian is the most difficult and dangerous. Relatively speaking, here in the United States, while things are changing for us, we still have a much easier path for faith and ministry.  Back in the first years of the Christian mission, times were enormously challenging. Persecution and opposition were common. For the most part, the apostles died as martyrs for the faith. (6) The early Christians had no church buildings or public presence. They met together in each other’s homes. They met wherever they could meet, sometimes in secret. They encouraged each other, but they were going against the flow of the society around them.

It was during those same years, though, that the Christian faith grew exponentially.  One prominent sociologist has estimated that during the 300 years following Jesus’ death and resurrection, the number of Christians increased by about 40% per decade–continuing at that rate decade after decade until the Christian church came to be dominant in the Mediterranean world. (7)  What enabled the early Christians to have such a steady, growing influence on the people around them, so that people wanted to know more about them and more and more people began to join with them?  

One thing those early Christians had was a powerful story that they shared, “a better story than their neighbors. … Christians told their neighbors a story about a big God who was deeply good and who loved human beings … who out of love for humanity, stepped down into humanity to lift human beings up to himself.” (8) That story transforms the way we live our lives. Let me share an example. Some years ago, there was a woman in my congregation in Texas, just a regular person, someone like you. At her workplace, there was another woman, a single mom, who was struggling to get through the day most days. The women frequently took breaks and lunchtime together and talked about life. One day, the younger woman said to her older friend, “How do you do it? You seem to have such a sense of calm about you. Somehow you always are pleasant, even when I keep dumping my problems on you because I’m so tired and stressed and frustrated. What’s your secret? Where do you get your strength?”  

Image via depositphotos.com

“Oh, dear,” her friend replied, “I don’t feel like I’m all that well put together. I have plenty of days when I’m frazzled and at my wits end. But the thing that gets me through is faith. I just keep hanging onto Jesus, because I know that when I am weak, he is strong. I go to church to get strengthened, because I need the comfort and forgiveness and encouragement I get there.”

The two hadn’t talked about faith before, but they began to talk about faith and the gospel quite a bit from that day on. That’s how relationships of faith begin. You have the same strength of faith at work in your hearts and lives, the power that God “put to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead” (Ephesians 1:19,20). Our lives have been resurrected with Christ–already now in the hope that we have, and knowing that through the resurrection that is to come, “we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thessalonians 4:17,18). So we encourage one another with these words, and we can encourage our friends and neighbors too.

When the early church was constantly growing and influencing people, “people were drawn into Christianity because of an experience of the resurrected Jesus.” (9) The knowledge and confidence and joy of the resurrection radiated in people’s lives. Remember why it was that Christians chose Sunday as their day for gathering to commune together.  If anyone ever asks you, “Why do you go to church on Sundays?” you have a powerful answer.  Every Sunday is a reminder that Jesus came back from the dead, alive again.  That miraculous truth is the center of our hope as Christians. We “know Christ and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10). “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, he was buried, and he was raised on the third day” (1 Corinthians 15:3,4). That truth is of primary importance, for if  Christ did not rise from death, our faith would be futile and meaningless (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:17). “But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. … God gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:20, 57).  So, as believers of that truth, we can be “steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord,” because we know that in the Lord our labor is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58). 

You may feel like laboring for the Lord is too much for you, like the call to be an evangelist is too hard a thing to do.  You’re in good company if you feel that way. Every faithful servant called to go and speak for God has had similar misgivings. Moses said, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent  … I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (Exodus 4:10).  When Isaiah was called, he said, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:6). When Jesus filled Peter’s nets, preparing to send him as someone who would fish for people, Peter said, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8).  When Paul was called by Jesus, he was stunned and for three days didn’t eat or drink anything (Acts 9:9).  So if you don’t feel up to the task, that’s understandable. But remember what God showed Isaiah. His mercy had touched Isaiah’s lips. All Isaiah’s guilt was gone, all sins and shortcomings forgiven (Isaiah 6:7).  Paul felt that he was unfit to be called an apostle, because he previously had persecuted the church of God. “But by the grace of God I am what I am,” Paul said. He realized that God’s grace toward him was given to him for a reason (1 Corinthians 15:9,10).  God’s grace has been given to you for a reason too. Each of you has a story to tell. You have a message to share.

Maybe, though, you feel like your opportunities to reach out are limited. Around the region where I live, there are many rural churches facing declining numbers in both congregation and in community. When we think of our congregations in rural America, the weaknesses and challenges tend to be the only things we see.  But one ministry advisor has focused on a key strength of small congregations in small communities.  ““People in rural churches share common experiences,” he said. “That’s certainly a strength of these churches. [They understand that] people are more important than programs. …  Relationships are key. Everything in a small church, a rural church, revolves around relationships.” (10)  I might add that relationships are key for all Christian congregations, in urban and suburban settings too.

Perhaps in the past we’ve had the mindset about our churches that if we have a building, they will come. If we have church services, they will come. If we have programs and activities, they will come.  But that’s not generally true.  The mission of the church is not to figure out what strategies to use to get people to come. Rather, our mission is to see what opportunities exist for us to go into all the world and speak the good news to every person (Mark 16:15).  That doesn’t mean buttonholing everyone you meet and saying, “Are you saved? If you were to die tonight, where would you be?” Conversations don’t start that way. Relationships built on trust don’t start that way. The strength of your witness for Jesus is in how you relate to others, human person to human person–like the story I shared about the woman and her work friend in Texas. It’s about how you extend hope and healing and heartfelt caring to people in daily life. The first followers of Jesus “initiated the largest movement in the history of the world, and they did it without an invite card.” (11) They didn’t even have church buildings to invite people to. You can share the faith simply by a willingness to live in faith and talk about your faith.

So, keep fishing. Keep putting your nets out in the water in the community around you. Drop a line to someone you know who needs good news. Christ calls us to reach out to others, even when it seems an impossible task. Jesus also promises to work miracles of his Spirit as we do what he calls us to do, just as he demonstrated that he could bring all sorts of fish into the boats that day on the Sea of Galilee. Keep fishing, my friends … knowing that when Jesus told us to go and make disciples of all nations, in the very next breath he said, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). He is with you, and you will be his witnesses (Acts 1:8). 

(1) Jeffrey Jones, “U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time,” Gallup, March 29, 2021.

(2) Church Attendance of Americans 2020,” Statista, January 15, 2021.

(3) Gregory A. Smith, “About Three-in-Ten U.S. Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated,” Pew Research Center, December 14, 2021.

(4) Cf. “Fishers of Fish,” by Gary M. Burge, Christian History Institute.

(5) David Bivin, “Miracle on the Sea of Galilee,” En Gedi Resource Center, June 14, 2019.

(6)  Cf. Ken Curtis, PhD., “Whatever Happened to the Twelve Apostles,” Christianity.com, April 28, 2010.

(7) Cf. The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History, by Rodney Stark, PhD, Princeton University Press, 1996. Review available in the American Journal of Sociology, January 1997.

(8) Cabe Matthews, “Evangelism in the Early Church and Today,” Firebrand, October 21, 2021.

(9) Cabe Matthews, “Evangelism in the Early Church and Today,” Firebrand, October 21, 2021.

(10) Dennis Bickers, quoted in “Rural Churches Struggle as Resources Flow to Urban Churches,” by Brian Kaylor, Center for Congregational Health, HealthyChurch.org.

(11) Preston Ulmer, “Stop Inviting People to Church,” Relevant, August 5, 2021.

Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
06
Mar
2021

Legalism obscures the gospel

Last week, I came across an article in which one of our country’s congressmen was interviewed about his convictions–both political and spiritual.  I found it interesting to hear a lawmaker’s view that the church, as he had experienced it, was far too much about law.  (He since has affiliated with a less rigid congregation.)  He described the form of religious upbringing he had as  “really damaging … a very damaging religion.”  He elaborated on what he had experienced:  “The best way to put it is your salvation is by faith alone unless you do something wrong–and then you were never saved in the first place.  And by the way, we have these really strict rules that you have to follow that nobody can follow, but everybody at the church is going to act like they are and you’re the only one that isn’t.”  That sort of legalism, the lawmaker said, “took the joy out of Christianity.” He says he now understands that “Christ spent his time hanging out with sinners, not great people–and not because they were sinners but because that’s just where his compassion was.” He believes it is appropriate to “admonish the Church for the real damage it has done to Christianity” (A.Kinzinger, quoted in “The Man Who Refused to Bow,” by P.Wehner).

The descriptions sounded all too familiar.  An excessive legalism has been an issue within Christianity from the days of the church’s beginnings.  Read about the controversy in the early church over circumcision (Acts 15) or Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and you’ll see that to be true.  

During my ministry years, I was asked to research and report on “legalism among us” to a district church conference. There was ample awareness that the problem persisted in our midst. The problem always exists, so it is continually appropriate to share thoughts on this topic.  I’ll offer here a brief excerpt from the essay I presented to that church conference in the springtime twenty-some years ago.


Legalism Among Us

by David Sellnow
(excerpted from essay presented in April, 1995)


Not everyone agrees on just what can be called “legalism.” One brother whom I asked narrowed the thought primarily to that of work-righteousness: “Legalism is an attitude of law that feels I can be saved by it.” But most whom I consulted saw legalistic implications being more far-reaching. They offered expanded definitions:

  • “We become entangled in legalism when we try to take God’s place in establishing divine laws about what is right and what is wrong.”
  • “Placing the Christian for all practical purposes again under the law–this is legalism.”
  • “Letting the law predominate in our ministry rather than the gospel = being legalistic instead of evangelical.”
  • “Legalism is a confusion of law and gospel in which the law is used to accomplish the purposes of the gospel or the gospel is made into a law.”

The Webster’s dictionary that sits on my desk lists two meanings for legalism. The second one is the special theological one: “The doctrine of salvation by good works.” The first listed meaning is the common one that most comes to mind, however, including in reference to religion: “Strict, often too strict and literal, adherence to law or to a code.” I believe that meaning fits well what most of us mean by legalism most of the time. Where does this kind of legalism show itself among us in the church?

One arena is the midst of doctrinal controversies, where the promotion of one dogmatic position over another takes precedence over Scripture. Some will approach Scripture with an opinion or position of their own and try to make proof texts say what they want them to say by gymnastic exegesis. Others will rely on the tradition of what the church has long held and practiced without doing thorough study. Neither approach starts with the gospel plan of God in mind and works forward from there. Both ways start with a law or principle decided upon–either by tradition or by rejection of tradition–and from there try to figure out how the gospel fits with it. 

Image credit: Bible Study Tools – https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/what-is-legalism.html

Traditionalism, in particular, all too easily lapses into legalism.  Overly zealous traditionalism will reject something because it isn’t what we’re used to. We fix guilt to practices that God’s law neither commands nor forbids. Religious leaders insist on practices which Scripture leaves to our Christian freedom. The freedom of the gospel is undermined by intolerant clergy, who suggest there is something inherently wrong with an activity even though God’s Word has not spoken in the matter. The church becomes characterized by loveless criticism of each other, pressure for conformity to a certain pattern, rushing to judgment, nitpicking, and condemning every deviation from the usual ways. 

The practice of discipline in the church is another area where legalism tends to take hold. I knew of a congregation that had a written policy saying inactive members would be sent a series of four letters, according to a specific timetable. If the member did not respond and become active accordingly, after the fourth letter excommunication was automatic. At an elders’ board meeting at a congregation where I interned, the head elder suggested a similar strategy in that church. Thankfully, the senior pastor blocked that proposal with reminders of our gospel mission.  Nevertheless, church discipline overall remains a danger zone for legalistic tendencies. This is true both in the local congregation and in discipline of congregations and pastors as exercised by church body officials.  What is our mood, our spirit? Is it, “Throw the rascals out!” and “Get rid of the dead wood”?  Or is our goal to snatch others from the fire and have mercy on those who are wavering (Jude 23)?  May we do everything we can to ensure that love stemming from the gospel characterizes all our actions and no unnecessary offense is caused. 

How we view other Christians and interact with them also becomes a casualty of legalistic tendencies. We fail to recognize the fellowship that exists between us when we fixate on our differences. In his commentary on Galatians (1957), J.P Koehler offered a thought in regard to Galatians 2:19 (“For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God”). Koehler wrote: “Formerly, sin was the element of my life when I tried to keep the law. Now, in the place of sin, God and his will are the goal and the guiding principle of my life.”  The contrast is between living life to avoid sin (as under the law) versus living life to enjoy the blessings of God, basking in the joy of the gospel. Applying that thought to the issue of Christian fellowship, do we primarily aim to keep the unworthy and the unorthodox away, or do we mainly seek a positive, joyful expression of appreciation for the unity in Christ that we share? Taken to the extreme, we may act as though even to breathe in the direction of those outside our own denomination is sinful, and adopt a separatistic attitude which forbids all contact with those who are not of our own specific church. Is it not true that Jesus said, “Whoever is not against us is for us” (Mark 9:40)? A genuinely evangelical (gospel-driven) attitude appreciates faith in Christ wherever it is found.

As witnesses of Christ who are called to proclaim the good news in Christ, we will work to keep the gospel central and paramount in all our thinking, saying and doing… and be patient and evangelical with each other when differences occur.  A law-oriented outlook will keep trying to rear up and take control of us in one direction or another, in our individual Christian lives, in our parishes, in church bodies. To maintain an awareness of how and where the law seeks to reclaim us is vital to our ongoing spiritual health. Any form of religious life not motivated by the gospel is an outgrowth of the law. May God be with us so that more and more, all our words and practices and efforts are readily apparent as products of the gospel, aimed at bringing hope and salvation–not distrust and fear.

Posted by David Sellnow
12
Aug
2020

The House of Disposable Souls

A Fable

by David Sellnow


“In the land of spirit beings, there was a house that gathered souls.They sought out souls that were perfectly spherical. Any souls they discovered that were out of round or oddly shaped were quickly discarded. They sought out souls that were unstained and unblemished. Any souls they discovered that had bumps or bruises were passed over and rejected. They sought out souls that were shiny and glowed in a preferred range of colors. Any souls they discovered that were mottled or blurry or too dark in appearance were left behind and ignored.

“Over time, the spirits gathered a small collection of souls that they protected and preserved in their house. If any of the souls developed inconsistencies or loss of clarity or discoloration or dulling, those souls were removed from the house. The spirits would seek other, more impeccable specimens, as replacements. The house became known as The House of Disposable Souls.

“Elsewhere in the land of spirit beings, there was another house that gathered souls. They searched for souls of all shapes and sizes. They included souls that were imperfect, unpolished, irregular. They valued souls that were rough to the touch as well as those that were smooth. They recognized special worth in souls that were differently shaped and of variegated colors. They saw deep potential in all souls they encountered. They labored to help each soul radiate its own unique sheen, coaxing out natural hues and luster. If souls they found or souls in their care suffered cracks or were damaged, the spirits applied balm to heal the wounds. They sought to refresh and develop each soul, nurturing strength as well as tenderness. The house became known as the House of Renewable Souls.”

After concluding the story, the teacher asked her listeners: “Which of these houses cared for souls as the Creator of souls intended?”

The listeners knew they had growing to do in their own attitudes and ministries.


Scriptures to consider:

  • “The Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).
  • “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. … I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:7,10).
  • ”Here is my servant, whom I have chosen. … He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick” (Matthew 12:18, 20).
  • ”Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:26-30).


Prayer:

Creator of all, teach us to value each human soul in the same spirit as Christ our Savior, who said, “Anyone who comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37). Amen.

—-

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
09
Feb
2020

We Aim to Proclaim

“We Aim to Proclaim” was one of the original Electric Gospel devotions distributed by email in the late 1990s. It was picked up and published in the June 1999 edition of The Northwestern Lutheran. Since the page on the new website about The Electric Gospel’s origins and purpose mentions a devotion about Tinky Winky, I thought I might share a version of that message with you here, twenty years down the road.

We Aim to Proclaim

by David Sellnow

In early 1999, the ministry of Rev. Jerry Falwell made news by protesting the program,Teletubbies. A Falwell ministry publication, National Liberty Journal, contained an article claiming that Tinky Winky (one of the Teletubbies) may be a subliminal gay role model because

  • he’s purple;
  • his antenna is shaped like a triangle;
  • he carries a purse.

Falwell’s crusade against the Tinky Winky (who actually carried a “magic bag”) generated much controversy. I had to agree with a Lubbock radio listener. When the controversy was being discussed on local radio, one mom commented: “Anybody who would get that from watching Teletubbies is too old to be watching the show!”   Elsewhere, Michael Linnemann, coordinator of Baltimore’s Gay and Lesbian Community Center, said, “It’s news to the gay community. We didn’t realize we had a doll. Is Barney gay too, because he’s purple?” (The Baltimore Sun, February 11, 1999).

I’m not writing about this because I feel it is my calling to be a defender of purple (or other-colored) children’s TV characters. To me, it’s simply another example of how too many religious leaders focus their efforts in the wrong direction. They speak against things more than they speak for the truth. They seek to enforce law more than they understand or offer gospel.

Christianity is not essentially about protesting against certain people or things. It is about proclaiming peace. What did Jesus say? “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). Jesus did not command us to go out and protest whatever we might think is wrong with our neighbors. Instead, he calls us to “conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge” (1 Peter 2:12). Our calling is to show forth the goodness and truth of God by our lives and by our witness. That’s a positive message of hope, not an exercise in negative finger-pointing. Our main mission is to proclaim Christ, who brings grace and healing to this world.

By the way, I am writing this during the season of Lent. The altar in our church is covered in purple. It’s a color that associated with royalty, as well as with the bruises and suffering of our Lord Jesus on our behalf. Thus, for us, it’s a penitential color; we recognize our need for redemption. Christ’s ordeal of suffering, known as The Passion, was endured for every one of us.

So when one of the kids brings a Teletubby doll to church, we don’t cast the doll—or the child—out.

Posted by David Sellnow