Our church is just getting ready to start a 12-week series on the Book of Galatians.  Different people from our church will be tag-teaming on the teaching part of things... But we’re hoping to make this something more than a once-a-week sermon thing, too.  We’re asking our church’s life groups and communities to focus on studying Galatians during the fall, in addition to the stuff that we’re doing on Sunday afternoons.  And even beyond organized activities, we’re encouraging everyone in the church to be reading and studying and meditating on Galatians, individually.  The idea with all of this is that if we can approach things from this multi-level perspective, it will create a much richer learning environment.

But anyway -- one of the more unusual things that we've developed to support this particular series is to set up a Facebook discussion on-line, to allow for others to participate in -- or at least observe -- the teaching process, even as it’s unfolding.  It's supposed to be a sort of "open source" approach to biblical teaching.  We've never done it before, so I'm honestly not sure how it's going to work out (or if it's going to work out at all)... It's certainly different than how the Apostle Paul did things way back in the day!

At any rate, the discussion is open to anyone.  You don't have to be a member of our church community to participate -- and you don't even have to have a Facebook account.  You can just go to http://www.facebook.com/amsterdam50, and join in from there.  I'd be curious to hear if anyone has any experience with "open source teaching," like this -- and if any advice could be offered for how to best avoid pitfalls and maximize the educational benefits of such an approach to Scripture...

At our church's weekly worship gathering, earlier this evening, we decided to study the Bible together a very simple and interactive way.  The entirety of our "message" was based on just one single Bible passage and four simple follow-up questions.

It went so well that I thought I'd share the lesson plan.

Basically, we just picked one Bible passage:  in our case, today, it was Luke 19:11-27.  First, we read it straight-through, with everyone reading along (visual reinforcement of the words on the pages).  Then, without any follow-up explanation, we read through the exact same passage a second time, with Bibles closed and everyone listening to a purely aural reading of the passage (aural reinforcement of the words from the passage).  Then, we asked these four simple follow-up questions and allowed opportunity for group interaction (which worked well, even though we probably had about 110 people in attendance).  These were the four questions:

1. How would you restate the passage in your own words?
2. What does this particular passage teach us about God?
3. If the message of this Bible passage is true, how would we have to obey?
4. With whom do you plan to share the things that you just learned?

My hope in doing things this way was for us all to be sucked into the learning process together -- not just me, the pastor, studying and studying... and preparing and preparing... all throughout the week and then sharing a "very wise, very insightful" message with the congregation while they all sit there and listen quietly.   My conviction is that the Bible is way more accessible than we typically believe!  You don’t need any kind of theological degree to read the Bible -- or even to teach from the Bible.  You don’t have to have any kind of formal "adjustment period" before you can start to get meaningful insight from your own study of the Bible.  Even if today happened to be the first time someone ever read or heard the words of the Bible, I'm convinced that it could have been an amazingly powerful and insightful experience all the same!  Yes, there are some parts of the Bible that may be kind of confusing, at first glance -- and there definitely is some benefit to deeper study and learning from others who have greater experience with studying the Bible... But I actually think that the vast majority of the Bible is immediately accessible and beneficial for anyone who would choose to pick it up and read it.  And this simple focus on one Bible passage and four follow-up questions provides a simple tool for any individual, small group, or church seeking to learn from the Bible.

To give credit where credit is due, I learned about this way of studying the Bible from an Indian church planter named Victor John.  He called it a “Discovery Bible Study.”  But seriously:  Even Victor John would admit that it’s not rocket science.  It’s not some magic formula for understanding the Bible.  It’s just one Bible passage and a total of four follow-up questions.  Maybe you should try it sometime...

Our church is going through a season of transition right now.  And as I was thinking about all this church transition stuff, it made me think of my old days in my high school's marching band.

Yes, I realize that it's a very odd association.  For those who aren't familiar with marching bands, they're a part of the American football phenomenon, where musical entertainment comes out in the middle of the football game, during half-time, to put on a kind of show.  If it sounds kind of weird, well, that's because it is kind of weird. Even in America, people in marching bands are considered a little bit weird and geeky (and I can only get away with saying this because I used to be one of those weird and geeky people in the marching band!).  But it's tradition, so everyone kind of goes along with it.  Anyway, the way that a marching band performance works is that you've got a group of maybe 50 to 100 musicians (big tuba-like Sousaphones, trumpets, drums, trombones), and they're all marching around on the football field, creating an interesting visual performance while playing their music.  The whole thing basically works with the band morphing from one shape into another.

For instance, maybe they’re doing a half-time show on big Hollywood movie music... They might be playing the theme song from the Pirates of the Carribbean movies, for instance, and then march into the shape of a big pirate ship, as seen from up in the stadium.  And then, maybe they switch into a song from Batman, and then they move around and everybody changes places to make the famous bat symbol.  Or it could be more basic stuff, too -- like circles and diamonds and other geometric shapes... But this is basically how marching bands work.  It’s all timed to the music so that the coolest shapes come out at the most dramatic swells in the music.

But what’s fascinating to me about marching band performances (and what brings me to the analogy that I’m trying to draw out, here) is what they have to teach us about transition.  It’s amazing, if you think about it, that a group of musicians can take the shape of a pirate ship... And then you take the same set of musicians, and they can also take the shape of the Batman symbol... Or a circle, or a diamond, or the word “Ohio” or whatever!  However, if you’re watching a show, and you take any step in the process and select a random freeze frame, it might look like pure chaos.  Like something dumb or demented.  Because there’s really no good, natural segue from a pirate ship to a Batman symbol.  The morph has to be a bit messy.  But just because it’s messy at any given point doesn’t mean that we need to despair.  We can have faith and hope that we’re going to see something big and beautiful when the next swell in the music comes.

This is where our church’s current transitions (primarily related to adaptations in the way that we do small groups) may feel very chaotic at times.  People in our church may feel like, “I haven’t enjoyed good, small-group fellowship for over a month now!”  Or they might feel like they don’t really want to shift from Home Groups to Communities, because they liked the look and feel of Home Groups as they used to be.  Others might feel like they're being left out of the new plans, like there’s no natural point where they're going to fit in when all the dust settles.  It may often feel like “I can’t take all the drama of this church anymore!”  And honestly, I couldn’t blame anybody for feeling frustrated or confused at times!  Because I feel that way sometimes!  If you take any random freeze-frame from these last couple of weeks (or maybe from the next couple of weeks, yet to come), it might look like pure and total chaos!

It’s good to remember that we really sensed God’s leading as we went into these transitions.  We talked about it and prayed about it and talked about it some more, as a Servant Leadership Council (all nine of us).  And ultimately, we made a unanimous decision to move in this direction.  It wasn’t a 5-4 vote, or 7-3, or anything like that.  We all felt God’s leading together, and we did a lot of planning and preparing to make sure that we weren’t hastily jumping into things.  Our current ideas for how to do church may not be perfect -- but they’ve certainly been well thought-out!

And while we may be going through a season of transition, we need to remind ourselves that God is a God of peace, not chaos.  God is the one who created the Earth from its vague, mysterious, primordial soup.  Genesis 1 records how, "The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.  And God said, 'Let there be light... water... sky... land... vegetation... heavenly bodies... fish... birds... animals... people...' God saw all that he had made, and it was very good."  This is also the same God who brought Israel through a dark period of its history, when the kings deserted the way of the Lord and the people drifted towards idols.  God spoke to Elijah during an especially dark and discouraging season of ministry, when the prophet was convinced that everyone had rejected the Lord’s covenant, broken down His altars, put all the other prophets to death, and seemingly left him all alone.  In the midst of that chaos and confusion, God spoke to Elijah and reassured him that everything was still under control.  And not just in a general sense either.  He provided specific names and details and reminded Elijah that he was not alone.  1 Kings 19:15-18 records the conversation:  "Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus.  When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram.  Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi kind over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet.  Jehu will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael, and Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu.  Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him."

Furthermore, in addition to the anecdotal references to God bringing order out of chaos, it's significant to remember that the Bible tells us very specifically -- very directly -- that God is not a God of chaos or disorder, but a God of peace.  He’s one who brings order out of chaos.  1 Corinthians 14:33 states it unequivocally:  "God is not a God of disorder but of peace."

I don’t know about you, but I find it very encouraging to think about these things while we’re in the midst of transition.  I find it encouraging to remember that any discomfort that we’re experiencing is just seasonal and passing.  If we can keep ourselves centered on Jesus -- on the God of peace -- then we’ll be able to make it through just about anything.  We can trust that God has a well-designed halftime show drawn up for us; we can just keep marching in faith, following his directions until the next swell in the music and the next dramatic revelation of His shape for us.

It's crazy to realize that I'm currently writing...

• A sermon per week, for the first two and a half months of 2010 (squeezing my previous annual average into the first quarter of the year!)...
• An extra sermon for the first weekend in February, for a wedding...
• A two-page prayer letter each month (with January's annual extended edition just about to come out at a full six pages!)...
• A full-length work of creative non-fiction (trying for roughly a chapter every two months), collaborating with a friend to record the memoirs of an Albanian mobster / shepherd / thug / drug courier / refugee...
• A ~ 500-word original devotional per day, as a part of my Proverbs 365 project...
• And my regular blogging here (typically 2-4 posts per week)

I often like to dream about a second career in writing.  But then I realize that I'm already kind of doing that!  I don't know if it reinforces the dreams for the future or creates disillusionment.  For now, I'm enjoying the season of intense content creation.  I'm also aware of the acute dangers of such a collection of projects eventually swallowing me!

But for now, I'm living it up.

I hope that I've demonstrated, through the past week's series on Hypocrisy, that we've all got a lot to think about when it comes to confronting this issue of hypocrisy.  It's persistent, pervasive, and often so deeply embedded that it's practically invisible at times.  It may be helpful to have other trusted friends assist in the process of uncovering the hypocrisy in our lives (granted the fact that we can have such a hard time seeing it in our own lives) -- yet I still believe that it's ultimately an issue that has to start with each one of us examining his or her own life.  As I said in my introduction to the series, we're all recovering hypocrites -- and recovery is a life-long process that starts when we stop pointing fingers at others and turn our examination inwards.

Perhaps you already picked up on this refrain from my previous posts about five of the major outworkings of hypocrisy in our lives, but the ultimate answer to hypocrisy is repentance.

When Jesus spoke to the Pharisees about the issue of hypocrisy, people immediately tried to make sense of current events in the light of Jesus' teaching.  In Luke 13:1-4 Jesus was confronted with some of the "headlines" in the news about terrible disasters that had happened in Galilee and Jerusalem -- with the people basically wondering if the people who had encountered tragedy and death were the ones who were
the most evil (such that God was paying them back for their sins).  But
Jesus emphatically replied:  No, we all make mistakes sometimes.  We all need to repent.  He said, "You will perish, too, unless you repent of your sins and turn to God... No, and I tell you again that unless you repent, you will perish, too."  Repentence is a process that needs to be taken seriously.

But repentence doesn’t have to be viewed as a negative process.  In fact, it can be one of the most liberating experiences of your life.  Acts 3:19 frames this call to repentence in especially beautiful words:  "Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord."  It's not just rhetoric either; I can personally attest to the refreshing benefits of repentence.

For each area of our life, repentence looks slightly differently:

  Repentence in the area of factional hypocrisy basically comes down to fearing God instead of fearing people...

   Repentence in the area of financial hypocrisy comes down to focusing on a rich relationship with God, depending on Him (instead of our financial resources) for our every need.

  Repentence in areas of reputational hypocrisy centers on finding one's identity in Jesus instead of in external circumstances or cultural codes.

  Repentence in the area of religious hypocrisy comes down to actively pursuing honesty and transparency.

  And repentence in the area of knowledge-based hypocrisy starts with relying on the Holy Spirit over and above any conventional wisdom or education.

But these aren't the only areas of our life in which hypocrisy can come to roost.  I focused on these five areas because they are the most directly addressed in the middle chapters of Luke (which served as the base text for this study on hypocrisy).   But I can certainly think of other areas -- also addressed in the Bible -- which also need to be examined, if one is trying to root out all kinds of hypocrisy.  Sexual hypocrisy seems to be one of the most obvious (John 8:1-11 and Matthew 5:27-30 provide some great food for thought, if you wanted to study out this subject further).  Other potential areas of hypocrisy to be examined might include our relationships, our child-rearing, and our consumption habits.  And that is by no means an exhaustive list!

In everything, though, we just need to remember to be constantly vigilant against hypocrisy (examining our own lives!) and we need to remember to repent.  That's the end analysis of this series.  I hope you've enjoyed it.  If you have any further thoughts, please feel free to interact through the comments.