A Good Friend

Early on Monday morning, August 27, just as I was beginning a time of worship and devotions for the Point University staff, I learned that my good friend and former colleague at what was then Atlanta Christian College, Don Jeanes,  had died suddenly.  I’m still trying to process that news – no one I know would say that it wasn’t shocking.

Don and I worked together at ACC for about eight years, before we both left the full-time employment at ACC to work in churches. He moved to Johnson City where he was on the staff at First Christian Church and I became the minister at First Christian Church of College Park.  Much of the time we worked together he was vice president for administration and I was dean of students – and of course we both taught in the classroom. Those were challenging days at ACC and Don worked overtime in making ends meet and I tried to make sure I did my part in keeping the ends in the realm of possibility when it came to meeting.  We both served together on a board for ministers in Georgia and Florida that focused on affordable health insurance. That wasn’t any easier at that time than it is now!

In the summer of 1983, we went from seeing each other nearly every day, eating in each other’s homes and going out to eat together, to seeing each other occasionally. We sometimes would meet in Atlanta for breakfast or in Johnson City. We often saw each other at the North American Christian Convention and a time or two at an event connected with Christian Missionary Fellowship. 

As a child, I suspect I would have defined friend as someone close by who will come over and play. As an adult I’ve come to understand that friendship isn’t about proximity as much as it is about common ideals, common faith, common commitment. Don never failed to ask about my wife and children – even my parents and Vicki’s parents. Our conversations easily picked up where they last ended – no matter the time that had slipped by between them.

Oddly, or providentially (and providence can be odd, so perhaps both) my devotion for the Point staff that Monday morning was based on 1 Thessalonians 5:14, where Paul encourages us “to admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, and be patient with all.”

When I think about Don’s life, from the time I first met him in the summer of 1976 to the last conversation I had with him, I think those words from Paul are apt descriptions of his life. Don was very good at admonishing those who saw life and ministry as an opportunity to be lazy and still get a paycheck. He was a great encourager for those who were down and out, troubled, and fearful. I could tell countless stories of how he helped people struggling to get the Jesus story integrated into their own lives. He was intense about life – but that intensity was shaped by a patient willingness to help anyone and everyone get to the next step.

The death of a friend hits us in ways that that can be a challenge. When we lose family members, other believers are quick to offer a helping hand. Sometimes we don’t do so well when other believers lose friends. But the water out of which we are born into Christ and create friendships marked by the common faith we have in Christ is sometimes thicker than blood!

To call yourself a friend of Don Jeanes means that you are standing in a long line of people who know that their circle of friendship has been lessened today because he no longer walks among us. But equally true, to call yourself a friend of Don Jeanes means that you understand the outcome of faith is always victory over the world and there is a sense of sober celebration in knowing Don’s victory.

Don lived a life where, because of his faith in Christ, he admonished the unruly, encouraged the fainthearted, helped the weak, and was patient with all. I’m grateful that I was among his circle of friends and experienced his gift for ministry.

Creators or Participants

In his great little book, Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer says “Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize, it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.” (page 30)

When I read those words, my first instinct is to remind myself that I should see what I do as participating in what God is actually doing rather than to see myself as creating what God would like to create. That idea alone could help us greatly with the important distinction between “God’s will for my life,” which can easily become a bit self-serving; and “God’s will for God’s life,” which will always focus on what He desires, not what I desire.

Interestingly, when Peter, speaking on behalf of the other disciples declared “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God,,” (doing so in perhaps the most pagan region Jesus ever visited) Jesus responded by saying “upon this rock I will build my church” not “that’s great Peter, you can build a great church with that idea.” (Matthew 16:13ff)

While attempting to help the Corinthian believers understand the difference in creators and participants, Paul declares, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth. . . For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.” (1 Corinthians 3:6-9)

The “historic reality” is, of course, that Paul is the missionary who was brave enough to attempt to plant a church in Corinth. But if those words quoted above reflect his understanding of that process, the “theological reality” was that he was a participant in what God was doing, not the creator of the church in Corinth.

Somewhere in all of this it seems to be fairly clear – though not always easily accepted – that by our participation in the work of God – being kingdom people doing kingdom things – we become His fellow workers in advancing the kingdom all over the world. Like Paul as one who planted and Apollos as one who watered, we are partners with God in the growth that He wills for His kingdom. That will, of course, is best expressed in Scripture by Peter, who declares, that God is “not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

Seeing ourselves as creators is far beyond any of our pay grades! Seeing ourselves as participants immediately reminds us that it isn’t a pay grade at stake, but the marvelous grace of God who is willing to allow us to be His fellow workers.

A prime example – at least it seems to me – of how this might work differently is our current cultural confusion, debate, and obfuscation about marriage. So many are attempting to “create” what a marriage actually is. That is happening on both sides of the debate. One side quotes Scripture, as read from their vantage point; the other side quotes Scripture from a seemingly contradictory vantage point.  That is nearly inevitable when humans see themselves as creators!

But I wonder what the discussion would be like if believers saw marriage as something God created that we participate in? And that in our participation, we modeled an approach to marriage that not only honored God but made the biblical ideal of marriage appear to be the only reasonable and attractive approach to the subject?

In the gospels, a life-long commitment to marriage seems to be discussed in the context of discipleship. In other words, a faithful marriage is one of the ways we model our commitment to “the rock” upon which the church is built. But that is hard to imagine in a world where the divorce rates, abuse rates, etc., among Christians aren’t statistically different from the rest of culture. Little wonder so many in our culture aren’t all that interested in seeing us as “creators” of the definition of marriage.

But what if we did participate as disciples of Jesus when it comes to marriage? Would our culture be attracted to Christ in ways we don’t see right now? Instead of seeing us as old fashioned and a bit out-of-touch, would they see us as having something important to say, and model?

I don’t know about you, but I’m relieved to know that I’m a participant, not a creator. Or, to re-quote Bonhoeffer, I am called to “a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.”

Hope!

1 Thessalonians is most likely the earliest writing of Paul preserved in the New Testament, and possibly the earliest writing of all the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. In its very first paragraph, Paul reminds those ancient believers that he and his traveling companions were “remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1:3)

In the very first paragraph of anything we have that Paul wrote, he mentions those three massive nouns – faith, love, and hope. Even in the most casual reading of the rest of his literature one will quickly notice that those three nouns (and also often in their verb forms) play a crucial role in what he has to say about how the Jesus story (“we preach Christ crucified . . .” in 1 Corinthians 1:18-25) should impact the lives of those who choose to believe and the cultures in which they live.

All three of those words are challenging! I recently listened to a recording of C.S. Lewis reading his wonderful little The Four Loves and was again amazed at what a “massive noun/verb” the idea of love really is. The whole “faith/believe” concept in Scripture could (and should!) occupy our thinking daily. But hope is a big word as well.

A part of the problem for me with this word is that we use it in some many different ways in English. Stop by a convenience store to buy a lottery ticket (not saying that I do) and the sales person is likely to say “hope you win.” But the managers of the system that picks a winner knows that you’re more likely to be struck by lightning twice on the same day. Despite failing to engage in class all semester, most students will turn in the final exam with a “hope I passed” comment of some kind. Parents who invest little in the area of discipline and instruction for their children, somehow “hope they turn out okay.”

Is that what Paul had in mind when he commended the Thessalonians for the “steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ”? Surely the sense that we have that somehow God is on our side and nothing can stand against us (Romans 8:31ff) isn’t quite as fickle as “hope you win” or “hope it turns out okay.”

So, despite the fact that you and I live in a world that seems more “hell bent” than “hope bent,” what is there about hope that gives me confidence to trust (faith) in God’s redemptive promises (love)?

Three simple ideas give us a place to start thinking about that. First, hope is never ego-centric. My hope is not rooted in my own sense of self. Hope is rooted in what God has done in raising Jesus from the dead. Second, hope is not dependent upon my good works. It would be utterly impossible for me (or anyone) to do enough good works to deserve what God has promised. With Paul, we declare “Christ in you (us), the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27) Third, hope is a gift from God. From Paul’s perspective, we must always see our lives as “abounding in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:23)

I have been trying, it seems like forever, to come up with one word in English that covers what Scripture teaches me about hope. I haven’t succeeded in that quest, but have been able to use two words that seem to say what I think Scripture says about hope. Those two words are “confident assurance.” I know that phrase would make translating the Greek word for hope a bit cumbersome – “Christ in you, the confident assurance of glory” just doesn’t have the ring that “the hope of glory” does. And I really don’t think we should give up on the great vocabulary of our faith just because those same words are used in so many different ways or because people don’t understand them. (See William Willimon’s The Intrusive Word for more on that.)

But I do think we have to explain ourselves in ways that give those words the same content that biblical authors and biblical readers would have had. For hope, I think that means we always think “confident assurance.”  

There isn’t a whole lot going on in the world around that gives us such “confident assurance.” But when I think about what God has done for us in Christ – that’s a different story!

This Isn't 1960!

In a collection of essays  titled Against the Tide, Miroslav Volf observes that “we live in an age of petty hopes and persistent conflicts.” (page 108)The book was published in 2010, so he isn’t directly talking about the current election cycle – though he perhaps was being prophetic!

One of the key questions for Christians – leaders and followers – is the question of witness. How do we talk about Christian values in an “age of petty hopes and persistent conflicts?” More to the point, do we need to find new ways to talk about Christian values, than perhaps would have been different just a generation ago?

A generation ago there seems to have been a kind of “civic Christian platform” – whether or not we think it was as close to the biblical idea of the church as it should have been – that gave the church a voice in speaking to values in our culture. I’m not sure that platform – civic or otherwise – still exists. The result is that Christians who do speak in the marketplace of media and other forms of public discourse often sound like ranting theocrats who want to force their version of Christianity into every person’s life. I’m not at all suggesting that every public comment from a Christian is designed to do that – but in the ears of our culture, it apparently seems to sound that way.

Even among believers we are impacted by living “in an age of petty hopes and persistent conflicts.” Some of those “persistent conflicts” revolve around which biblical ideas we are comfortable hearing and which ones we aren’t. In my own experience, I’ve noticed that a passing comment about abortion as a sin can get you lots of “preacher, that was a great sermon;” while a similar passing comment about greed and materialism gets you something else. It’s acceptable to note the sin of homosexuality, but not quite so acceptable to talk about the biblical view of marriage as a life-long commitment from God’s point of view. 

It even makes me nervous to write some of this, knowing that it will be read in a variety of settings and our tendencies towards “persistent conflict” could easily make someone think “he’s pro-abortion or pro-homosexuality” simply because I raised a question!

So, back to the original question. What can we do to be more effective in our desire to speak on behalf of Christ to the world in which we live? And to do so in a way that actually serves to transform our world rather than intensify the “petty hopes and persistent conflicts.”

No doubt a part of the challenge is that we live in a sound bite/bumper sticker world where complicated spiritual matters are discussed in tweets sent all over the world in a convoluted form of grammar and spelling with a limited number of characters. Can you really reflect God’s view on marriage and divorce and remarriage on a bumper sticker? Or some cleverly designed Facebook graphic? 

Somewhere along the way we seem to have forgotten the blessing of engaging our world in a conversation about Jesus. And our world has noticed that we are very quick to speak boldly about some spiritual issues and not so quick about others. That combination of issues, coupled with the fact that the “platform” we could once stand upon doesn’t seem to exist anymore, makes it more than merely challenging to speak wisdom to our culture.

Perhaps we could learn from Paul and his mission in Philippi. (Acts 16:11ff)  Meeting “outside the city” as Luke describes it, he went to a prayer meeting being led by a group of Gentile women who were “worshippers of God.” It is hard to imagine all the cultural upheavals a person with Paul’s life story had to deal with in sitting down with this group of Gentile women. But he did. 

Luke says “we sat down and spoke with the women . . .” His word “spoke” has at least the potential of meaning something like “we had a conversation.” It certainly doesn’t imply “we gave them a bumper sticker!”

In the end, Lydia and her household were baptized, another kingdom outpost was born, and this Gentile woman convinced Paul to say longer in Philippi. Not a bad conversation!

Reading the “We” Book

Growing up in the south, I think I’ve heard it at least a million times. I’ve even adopted as a personal mission to rid our colloquial way of talking of this phrase – though I doubt I’ll live long enough to accomplish that mission!

It’s the way lots of people, not just southerners, talk about their relationship with God. In my neck of the woods, as we say in the south, it comes out like this: “I got saved on . . .” For people who give priority to baptism, it usually means that they were baptized on a particular date and from that moment on, “I got saved.” For people whose understanding of baptism isn’t quite so much of a priority, it usually means there was some identifiable moment in life where they made a commitment to Jesus, and from that moment on, “I got saved.”

Of course it is important to talk about our faith – and that certainly includes how we came to have a relationship with God through Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit. But it may actually be more important to talk more about why we remain believers than how we became one. Growing up in a very committed family, attending a Christian college and then seminary and after that spending my entire life in either a local church or academic setting for ministry – I don’t have much to tell when it comes to “how did you become a disciple of Christ?” But, if the subject is “why do you remain a believer?” then there is much to be said.

Much of that answer would revolve around two fundamental biblical truths: first, God’s community of disciples, the body of Christ, has always shepherded me alone the way which makes that first person singular pronoun questionable; and second, my relationship God has, over these many years, continued to grow because of the body of Christ, which makes the event sounding “got saved” part of that phrase questionable.

In Scot McKnight’s A Community Called Atonement: Living Theology, he puts it all in perspective when he says, “The Kingdom of God is more than what God is doing ‘within you’ and more than God’s personal ‘dynamic presence’; it is what God is doing in this world through the community of faith for the redemptive plans of God – including what God is doing in you and me. It transforms relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the world.” (Kindle location 4455)

Better than saying “I got saved . . .” would be to say “we are being saved . . . and in that saving relationship with God, He is using us (not just me!) to renew and restore the world to what He made it to be.” The power of individualism, which is nearly pandemic in most Western cultures, simply stands at odds with the idea of the kingdom of God found in the New Testament. While I am confident that I have a “personal relationship” with God through Christ, I am equally confident that it has meaning only in the context of God’s community – the body of Christ. If that isn’t true, then it is hard to understand how Jesus could be comfortable telling his contemporary Jews that they could sum up everything with two simple (not simplistic) phrases: love God and love neighbor. (Luke 10:25ff is a great place to read and reflect on this idea.)

So . .  . the Bible we are reading really is a “we book” and not an “I book.” Perhaps you will help me in my mission to rid the world of “I got saved” and replacing it with “we are being saved.” After all, we truly are in this together – according to the “we book.”

In Need of an “Until Moment”

Psalm 73 is one of those psalms that ought to be read often. It has such a contemporary ring to it that one would be hard pressed to think the words of the psalm weren’t written directly to our age and culture.

At the center of the psalm are these words: “But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end.” (Psalm 73:15,16, NRSV)

The words of Psalm 73 are ascribed to Asaph, who seems to be a man who had been faithful to God, but not rewarded; and a man who sees himself surrounded by faithless people who seem to have it all. The idea that wicked people would be prosperous causes him to question the idea that God is just.

After boldly declaring that the wicked always seem to be at ease and increasing in riches (73:12) he sound a bit like the author of Ecclesiastes in declaring “all in vain I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been plagued, and am punished every morning.” (73:13,14, NRSV)

It seems to me that the phrase “until I went into the sanctuary of God” is crucial. At its minimum, that phrase must suggest something about the importance of the worship of God. The text doesn’t say if the psalmist received some special revelation from God, but it could have simply been a word he heard from a priest in the Temple finally got his attention. Whatever happened – it surely happened in the midst of worship.

After his “until moment,” the psalmist changes tunes completely. He ends the psalm with phrase like “my flesh and my heart may fail, but god is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (73:26) and “but for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, to tell of all your works.” (73:28)

One of the things that makes me value the relevance of this psalm so much is how often struggle in life becomes the excuse for not worshipping. Asaph seems headed in that direction – only to discover that it was only in the context of confronting the presence of God in worship – “until I went into the sanctuary of God” – that he gained a new and much better perspective about life.

Jump forward in time a few centuries and you will discover the author of Hebrews encouraging his readers by these words: “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24,25, NRSV) Oddly enough, those words precede a paragraph later in the chapter when he reminds them that life is sometimes difficult – but even in the difficulties we face, there is no need to “abandon that confidence of yours; it brings a great reward.” (10:36)

These are hard times for lots of folks – maybe even most folks. Perhaps our own “until moment” would help us!

The Move

I can remember conversations at least 30 years old where the trustees of what is now Point University wondered whether or not our East Point campus was the right place for what we knew then as Atlanta Christian College to grow into the college we all dreamed about. At some level, the reality of the move that surrounds me at work today – my office is even more a wreck than usual! – should not be all that surprising.

But it was only about five years ago that the moment of reality that characterizes this week became a firm decision. But even then, the process has been a long one, and the tanking of the global economy slowed down what had been a firm and unanimous decision on the part of the trustees. 

About 18 months ago the big announcement said that Atlanta Christian College would become Point University and that the new home for the traditional program would be West Point, Georgia. By the time the announcement was made, the senior leadership team had toured the former international headquarters for a textile conglomerate, the apartment complex where students would live, all sorts of athletic facilities, and anything else that might potentially be a part of Point University’s new home.

Initially, we thought we would be “leaving East Point,” but the huge blessing of an adult degree program known as Access meant that the old East Point campus would become an off-site location for Point University with some 600 students and room to grow. The renovation of some of the space in East Point has already begun! But that’s not all! In addition to the East Point location, Point University would arrive in West Point with campuses in Peachtree City and Savannah – and more to come in the future. 

It is nearly incomprehensible – except for the fact that God is clearly a part of it all – to think that six years ago, we were a small, struggling Christian college with an excellent faculty but struggling to keep enrollment steady, much less growing. Now – and God gets the glory in this – we have some 1300 students on four campuses. The commitment to transform the world through the integration of faith into every academic discipline is more intentional than ever and we are graduating students who, regardless of their vocational goals, have been taught that the ideal of “the priesthood of all believers” applies to business leaders as well as preachers; school teachers as well as youth ministers; and counselors as well as worship leaders. We all, in that sense, are “missionaries” who are determined to change the world. 

But – there is that inevitable tug of the heart strings when you see moving vans on campus and know that by noon on 14 June 2012, your office is supposed to be packed and ready for the move to West Point. Let me explain.

Between 1969 and 1973, I spent nine months of each year on this campus. I lived in Roberts Hall four years, ate many meals in the old Head Hall Dining Room, attended class in Old Main, or in “the Greek Room” on the lower end of Alumni Hall. I went to chapel twice a week (we weren’t brave enough back then to miss too often) in what was then Westside Christian Church and ate enough “Small KC Steaks” at Wingo’s on Campbellton Road to explain my elevated cholesterol readings today. 

It was in those years that I met people who would be life-long mentors. Orval Morgan taught me something about the dignity of preaching; Ralph Warren taught me how to write better; Roy McKinney taught me more than I can put on paper; and Jim Evans helped me fall in love with Greek and interpreting Scripture. Jim Redmon was a model of quiet, but steady leadership and Denver Sizemore taught us all that you need to take good notes.

I also met the best thing (other than Jesus) that has ever happened to me during those years. Vicki Kindt and I were freshmen together in 1969 and while she tends to dismiss my story as apocryphal, I picked her out in the “freshman orientation” line. Later this summer we will celebrate 39 years of marriage. Had it not been for the East Point campus of Atlanta Christian College, it seems unlikely that a little country boy from rural South Carolina would have ever met, much less married, the accomplished musician from St. Petersburg, Florida.

All of that doesn’t begin to describe my attachments to this place. Since June, 1976 I have been on this campus on a nearly daily basis. Even in the twenty years I spent as preacher at First Christian in College Park/Tyrone, I taught at least a class every semester and most often a summer school class. I’ve been to basketball games, soccer games, volleyball matches, student events, recitals, concerts, and who knows what else – all right here on this campus. 

I’ve taught Biblical Interpretation (once known with the lovely sounding title Hermeneutics and Exegesis) every fall for 36 years – and sometimes in the spring semester as well and in almost every summer school. Theological Foundations for the Christian Life (once known as Christian Doctrine) has been my class since the early 1990s and a host of other theology and New Testament related courses have been taught by me in these classrooms. 

Here – on this campus – I’ve met a student or two I could have killed – but a boat load or two I would die for. It was on this campus that I met young men and women who allowed me to invest in their lives and who are now serving God all over the world. I’ve even been able to teach hundreds of students in the adult program – whose commitment to serving Christ always manages to remind me of the privilege of teaching.

So . . . how could I not feel just a bit weird today when, walking from the weekly meeting vice presidents have with the president, I walked past a moving van loading up “stuff” to take to West Point?

Yet – just last Tuesday Vicki and I took two very good friends – friends we met on this campus for the first time – and walked through the nearly-complete Academic Center and then drove around to all the Point University facilities that are being readied for August of this year. It is, in a word, unbelievable. I have said to lots of people “it’s too nice to be a Christian college!” 

The potential for Point University – not only in West Point, but in East Point, in Peachtree City, in Savannah, and in all the other places where we will establish kingdom outposts where kingdom people can be educated to do kingdom things – is amazing. It is so amazing that it seems impossible to me that anyone could look at what is happening and not thing “this is of God!”

I won’t lie and say I don’t have attachments to this East Point campus. Fortunately, my role as vice president for spiritual formation and dean of the chapel, as well as teaching in the Access program, means I will be back on campus in East Point on a regular basis. I’m thankful that what we initially thought about “moving” evolved into “relocating the traditional campus” and not simply “moving.” I’m thankful that relocating the traditional program gives the adult program room to grow. I’m thankful that our traditional campus in West Point will give us room to grow. I’m grateful that the expansion of what we offer gives us more opportunity to influence the current generation to become “kingdom people doing kingdom things” all over the world.

I don’t know what else to say about this week than to simply say “I’m grateful – moving pains and all – for what God is doing on these campuses!”