I would imagine that most of you are like me, in that you haven’t spent much time in an Orthodox church and don’t know much about it. While sparing you of all the mundane history details of how the church was formed, I thought I’d share a few key things I believe evangelicals can learn from the Eastern Orthodox church based on my time at the church. Certainly I have my differences theologically and practically with the orthodox church, but that should not overshadow what we can learn from how they practice their faith.

1. Church is a sensory experience. The building alone is very beautiful as you can kind of tell from the picture. During their gatherings throughout the week and on Sunday they keep incense lit. This along with the icons (pictures) hung and painted all over the walls and the singing (chanting) that takes place means church is an experience for the nose, eyes, and ears. Certainly evangelicals don’t completely agree with the idea of icons but I like the way Father George Gray talked about icons as being windows to a deeper reality, not a reality in and of themselves. This I can’t disagree with.
2. Strong historical emphasis, often known as supra-temporal. Supra temporal essentially means bringing the past to the present, or the understanding that some things are above time (example being the eternity of God). The icons (pictures, paintings) all around the room represent the history of the Christian faith. Between the disciples, various saints, and key figures within the Christian faith, the orthodox look to the history of their faith to receive power for their present circumstances. This passing on of faith is often referred to as Holy Tradition, of which Paul somewhat refers to when he says, “For what I received I passed on to you , as of first importance” (1 Corinthians 15:3).
3. Everything has meaning and purpose. A person in the class asked why Jesus was painted with garments of various colors and Father Gray spoke about the meaning of each color. Questions were asked about why there were few chairs, why icons were placed in specific areas, why the stage area (it wasn’t really a stage) was closed off, etc…and everything had a meaning and a purpose. I was blown away. Talking to my professor after class I explained how at my church I think the carpet was chosen simply because enough people wanted it. Few things in our evangelical churches has any meaning or purpose beyond somebody wanting it that way. How sad.

For those of you familiar with Orthodox churches, what do you think we can learn from them?

I’ve blogged several times about the importance and benefits of seminary, despite it being valued less and less by pastors and churches. But I believe this is because people view seminary as a place to get a degree, which was never the point of why I began to attend.

After taking some time to think through what seminary has meant to me over the past four years of my life, four distinct things came up:

1. Education is about formation not memorization or knowledge gained. This is ultimately why I chose to go to seminary. It wasn’t because I wanted to fill my head with memorized Scriptures or a well composed understanding of who God was. I wanted to be formed more into His image and learning under Godly men and women seemed to be the best circumstance to do that.
2. There’s no substitute for giving yourself time and space to process. One of the difficult pieces to seminary is that most students take at a least a few classes while also working part time or full time. It leaves very little time outside of class to truly invest in the work needing to be done. In order for formation to truly occur, I’ve had to be extremely intentional about giving myself time to process what I’ve been learning in class, in order for it to take root within me.
3. Being connected at a local church is vital to the success of any seminary student. I’m using “success” here pretty loosely, but I know far too many friends in seminary who have loose connections and only go to church irregularly at best. They have no outlet for helping make their seminary learnings work in a practical environment. If the local church isn’t a priority in seminary, I highly doubt it will be one after either.
4. The world needs more men and women who are willing to be prepared for Christian ministry through a seminary education. It’s all too common for someone to want to pursue being a pastor by becoming an intern in youth ministry, then working as a middle school pastor, and slowly working their way up the church ladder to larger roles at larger churches, making more money. These people often become great practitioners of church ministry, but have an enormous hole when it comes to solid understanding of the Bible and how it relates to us.

What did you learn during your education experiences?

I’m curious (other than the Bible) what is one piece of art that has changed your life?

Could be a book, movie, song, painting, etc, really anything you would consider worthy to be called art.

Ready, set, go.

The story of the astonishing act of God himself in coming down to be part of our alienated world, to endure the full horror of our rebellion against love, to take the whole burden of our guilt and shame, and to lift us up into communion and fellowship with himself, breaks into this self-centered search for our own happiness, shifts the center from the self and its desires to God and his glory.

It is true, God forgive us, that Christians have turned even this into something that they thought they could possess for themselves; that they have privatized this mighty work of grace and talked as if the whole cosmic drama of salvation culminated in the words “For me; for me.”

As if the one question is “How can I be saved?” leading inevitably to the question, “How can anyone be saved?”

But this is a perversion of the gospel.

For anyone who has understood what God did for us all in Jesus Christ, the one question is: “How shall God be glorified? How shall his amazing grace be known and celebrated and adored?”

The discussion of the role of the world religions and secular ideologies from the point of view of the Christian faith is skewed if it begins with the question, “Who is going to be saved at the end?”

That is a question which God alone will answer, and it is an arrogant presumption on the part of the theologians to suppose it is their business to answer it.

We have to begin with the might work of grace in Jesus Christ and ask, “How is he to be honored and glorified?”

The goal of missions is the glory of God.

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Excerpt from Newbigin’s “The Gospel in a Pluralist Society,” pages 178-179.

I read this a few weeks back and it really broke me. How often does the Gospel become something centered on me rather than something that inspires me to bring glory to Him? For me, it is a difficult question to grasp.

Check out all the other posts on VOCATION, RESTORATION, CREATION, and CROSS-BEARING.

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Growing up as a senior pastor’s oldest son I’ve seen the style of local churches change. It would not surprise anyone to here me say I think many churches get caught up in “what’s working.” And it is with this type of thinking we have our church building Christian culture.

We go to church to be fed, expecting great music and great teaching while our kids are entertained enough to want to come back.

As more people come to the church, the church begins to expand its staffing, building size, and amount of ministries. In turn, the expectations rise as to how effective the church can be at providing better music, better teaching, and better childcare because after all, people’s money should be used in an effective way.

In reality, none of this is bad in and of itself, but it paints a picture of an unhealthy cycle most churches and believers have been living within, especially in America. Thousands, maybe millions of people have come to know Christ through the church building culture of the late 1900s and early 2000s. I believe God has a better mentality in mind, one that doesn’t abandon the role of the local church, but sees its role transformation to be a catalyst for cultural engagement.

God desires to use us in his mission to engage our world. We have been baptized and called into the mission.

The church is now being sent into the world through vocation, restoration, and creation in order to selflessly announce the reign of God in this world.

Any thoughts as we wrap up this series?

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The last key area Christ leads us into cultural engagement is through cross-bearing. This is in reference to Jesus’ teaching to his disciples in Luke 9 when he says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it” (Luke 9:23-24).

Jesus’ demands of us are not surface level changes and they are not easy because they involve an immense sacrifice most are unwilling to give. He gave his life, in order that those who follow him would give their lives as well. Jesus’ atonement is not simply a gift of a better life or even eternal life, it carries consequence for our lives now as well.

The selfishness and me-first attitude of culture is often represented well within the walls of churches and believers everywhere. Those who do not know Christ will easily pick up on our selfish desires for converts if these three previous areas of focus (vocation, restoration, and creation) become acquisitive methods.

This last area of focus is the most important and is really where it all begins. CS Lewis hits on this in his book First and Second Things when he says, “You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only but putting first things first.”

For Christians the first thing is for us to follow Jesus with all we have, holding nothing back. Once we begin to make this first thing our top priority, all the other ways we engage the world around us will more easily fall in place.

(I’ll conclude the series in the next post)

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Christians have long been known to condemn culture when it does not reflect their beliefs and values system.

Jerry Falwell didn’t like Teletubbies, Terry Jones didn’t like the Quran, and Pat Robertson doesn’t like gay marriage. Sure these are extreme examples of Christian leaders who many Christians don’t appreciate, but these are the stories making national news.

There is a fundamental flaw to this approach of condemning the culture: nothing changes.

Most people refer to culture simply as the air we breathe. Culture is just the reality of the world around us.

As is most often the case, condemning a piece of culture only ends up bringing it more exposure and value, while making the condemner newsworthy enough to look foolish. Truly, “the only way to change culture is to create more of it” (Andy Crouch). Culture is not changed by reversing trends, it is changed by creating something new.

Don’t like what you see in the world today? Create something better.

I love the picture Gabe Lyons paints on the creation of culture: “The next Christians are fast at work creating good culture. In doing so, they aren’t just reconstructing what’s broken; they are adding on a new dimension in the places they’ve been called to—restoring the truth, goodness, and beauty that’s been lost.”

Creation of culture which reflects who God is shows itself by truth-telling, goodness, and beauty.

Michelangelo said that when it comes to culture we “critique by creating.”

It is next to impossible to know which creation will change the world as we know it. But ultimately God’s people have an opportunity to shape the culture in ways they rarely have before.

(Next post: Cross-bearing)

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Spend any time analyzing the world we live in today and it becomes so apparent we live in a broken and hurting world. People are amazingly talented at masking this hurt and pain, especially in America, but the endless stories of death and destruction on the evening news says all that needs to be said about the state of our world.

Rather than engaging this brokenness with care and hope, Christians are known to retreat to their churches to worship and judge the world outside those church walls.

One thing we learn from Jesus’ earthly ministry was that he focused so much of his time on bringing hope and restoration to people with broken lives. We see this with the woman at the well in John 4, the man with leprosy in Matthew 8, the woman caught in adultery in John 8, the Roman centurion in Luke 7, and with Zacchaeus in Luke 19. And really I could highlight many other situations as well. Jesus had engaged in their lives to restore them. In some cases this was a spiritual restoration, in others it was a physical restoration that carried a spiritual meaning. Churches are well known for caring about the spiritual needs of people, but few churches have been involved in restoring the physical needs of people.

Christians are called to take the mantle from Jesus to continue the act of restoring a broken world. The difficulty of restoring this world is the encounter we have with sin, because we will have to fight the urge to correct it. Paul, throughout his ministry in Asia Minor, engaged with unredeemed people stuck in sinful patterns of life. “He wasn’t there to close the deal and lead everyone in the sinner’s prayer, and he didn’t condemn them all to hell…Paul trusted God’s ability to fulfill his will in his own timing” (Gabe Lyons describing Paul’s ministry).

When it comes to cultural restoration I think of my friends at The Mentoring Project and the work they are doing to restore the lives of fatherless boys through mentoring. John Sowers, the President of The Mentoring Project, would often say to me: “How can we not do something?”

(I also came across this interesting post on Mr. Rogers being a restorer)

This is truly what restoration is all about: recognizing a brokenness and need in our world and doing something to restore it.

As restorers of today’s world we have the opportunity to bring hope to people and situations that are completely broken.

How have you seen Christians involved in the restoration of our world?

(Next post: Creation)

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I sense that in today’s churches many view pastoral leadership as the pinnacle of Christ following.

I like how Steve Bishop put it in a post I read over the weekend: “All Christians are involved in full-time Christian ministry. There is no such thing as part-time Christians. Never use the term ‘full-time Christian ministry’ to describe only those with a role in the church or a church-related activity.”

Gabe Lyons says, “For decades, many Christians have thought the only place they could impact the Kingdom was through serving in their local churches…But the faithful are coming alive as a new generation of Christians are making the real connections between their faith and their work…Imagine what is possible when Christians throughout the church recover this sense of vision for their work in the world.”

This framework sets up our discussion on vocation and how it relates to the missio Dei (The Mission of God). Our world doesn’t need more pastors, it needs more disciples who as teachers, doctors, lawyers, athletes, and entrepreneurs are living out the missio Dei.

Frederick Buechner is well known for saying that our calling is where “our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” As Christians find this calling within their vocations, we’ll see more churches reach a new level of “success” because it is no longer just the pastor pursuing faithful Christian calling.

I believe we must start with a healthy understanding of giftedness and value within the Body of Christ. 1st Corinthians 12 speaks directly to this issue as it shares on the various gifts given within the body. Paul also shares that each part makes up the whole body and is dependent on the other parts. This values each person and each gift as vital, not placing certain gifts and people above others.

We must see ourselves, not as working at jobs, but rather we are being called to serve in the missio Dei with our gifts through our vocations.

No longer is the church the center of disciples serving, the world is.

Christianity has often been thought of as something valued for an hour or two on Sundays, but the people making a difference with their faith understand their vocation to be integral to their faith.

(Next post: Restoration)

There is no disputing this fact.

Talk to most any person who would not call themselves Christian and they would say Christians are most known for being hypocritical, judgmental, overly political, and insensitive. In today’s world perception is reality, and whether those negative words reflect all churches or people we know, they do paint a picture of reality for how Christians are viewed today.

Christians have long struggled with ways to engage in their world without copying, critiquing, or avoiding culture. And judging by the common negative perceptions, we’ve clearly done a bad job.

This isn’t a call for Christianity to become more popular in culture, but it is an opportunity to open the door to spiritual transformation through Christ to a culture looking for hope and life.

Maybe all this time we’ve misunderstood our call to engage the cultures around us, after all many of us have to wonder whether our engagement with culture will ever amount to any good.

I want to focus on the ways I believe God is calling us to bind ourselves to the culture around us without losing our distinct mark as followers of Christ. Andy Crouch says, “Culture finds its true potential when God blesses it with his presence and offers it in transformed form as a gift back to humanity.”

We must see the great opportunity here, as God uses us to usher in his presence and his reign in our world. God calls the church (both local churches and individuals which make up the church universal) to engage with culture through working (vocation), restoring, creating, and cross-bearing.

Any feedback?

(I’ll focus on these areas of vocation, restoration, creation, and cross-bearing in the coming days.)

(Part Two)