A couple of interesting things

OK, maybe a few, not a couple. Over at Jesus Creed, Mike Glen talks about prayer. Deep prayer. Prayer so deep that it is wordless. Spirit-led, Spirit-carried prayer. Read it.

Ron Sider has a word or so on immigration. Here's a taste, but read the whole thing and think about it.

We are a nation of immigrants. At our best, we have told the world, “Give me your tired, your poor, your struggling masses yearning to be free.”

But in the last two years plus, our president has labeled would-be immigrants as rapists and druglords. He has separated children from their parents. He has made it difficult for people to use their legal right to apply for refugee status.

The number of refugees allowed into the US by Pres. Obama in his last year in office was 110,000. But by last year, Pres. Trump had cut the number to 30,000. And for next year the number is a mere 18,000.

Does the Bible have any wisdom on this situation?

And an Aussie blogger has a series on bullying in the church. Here's the link to the first one and the second one. He's promised at least a third one. Here's a taste:

In other words the success of the organisation is dependent on the self-focus of that leader to get what THEY want for themselves. If they can get what they want for themselves, the happy byproduct is that the brand can live on, indeed outwardly thrive, in the afterglow. And we run the risk of transplanting that perspective on to church in these desperate times. Actually we don’t run that risk, that’s what we have done.

The fact is people know – leaders knew – that Mark Driscoll was bullying people constantly, but they did nothing about it. Why? Because the brand was kicking goals. And boy do we need a few evangelical brands that kick a few goals. And if that is so then then a few eggs can be broken in the process. . . .

What did it take to get the leaders to listen? Sadly, the same thing it takes for secular leaders to listen; the risk to the brand. Mars Hill not only started not to kick goals because of Driscoll, but the press coverage was making it kick own-goals. Once that happened, but only once that happened, was Driscoll in trouble.

Driscoll and Hybels were unimpeachable, until the brand started to suffer. Then everyone who had enabled them for so long, and suppressed the bleating of the sheep, suddenly found voice, chucked them out; before ironically, and with no level of insight, offering themselves as the solution to the problem that they had exacerbated in the first place.

The other thing I’ve noticed too is that, depending on our theological framework, we give more leeway to our own, than to others. So Driscoll was always the enfant terrible to the progressive crowd, what with his commitment to complementarianism and substitutionary atonement and all. So it was obvious wasn’t it? Well, not to many in the Young, Restless, Reformed crowd, who were all too often “Yeah, I don’t like his style, but…”

Yet many within that same crowd gave no leeway to Hybels ever, and when he fell, pointed to the business leadership structures that he had in place, and his unfortunate tendency to surround himself with women leaders in senior pastoral roles. There was equal shock by many egalitarians that the man who most championed these women, was abusing his power over them! When should either side be surprised? When they don’t take sin seriously enough, especially in relationships that involve power disparities. . . .

You’ll notice too, that the two “whales” I mentioned started and led their own churches that turned into mini-denominations. They were the supreme leader of the church and the brand. And that is a phenomenon of the can-do attitude of the 21st century, late capitalist West. You can be your own mini-Pope, yet, ironically, with far more direct power than the actual Pope, who has all sorts of historical caveats restraining him. And for good reason. The Pope is not sitting around thinking of a new vision statement for the Church every three to five years, and then hiring and firing those around him to make it happen.

Finally, Roger Olson talks about Paul's description of a church gathering in I Corinthians and the currently popular version of a "worship" service. I might add, it isn't just evangelical churches that are falling prey to this. I've been in mainline churches that have the same approach—singing the same popular songs (well, the leaders sing them; as he says, they aren't singable by real people) with at best a pop sermon with virtually no scripture being read. No wonder the church is anemic. It's eating the equivalent of junk food.