One of our readings in preparation for the third gathering of the Apprentice Experience is The Magnificent Story: Uncovering A Gospel of Beauty, Goodness, and Truth by James Bryan Smith. I am so privileged to actually know Jim and to have shared meals with him and chatted with him about his work and about some of my meager efforts at discipleship and spiritual formation ministry. This is a guy who had Rich Mullins as a tenant in his house and was designated by Dallas Willard to write a Curriculum of Christlikeness.

But after reading The Magnificent Story, I am especially blessed to be associated with his ministry as a participant in the Apprentice Experience. This book, though not shy on theology and some scholarly heavy lifting, does for the Gospel what Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy did for the Kingdom of God. If you thought you knew all their was to know about the Gospel, Smith would say that you have just been exposed to a reduction and not the magnificent story full of goodness, beauty, and truth. He looks at reduced gospels such as the social gospel or the penal substitution gospel as important theological points but because they are reductions have become distortions that are doing more harm than good. As an alternative, Smith emphasis the Trinity as something we lose when our gospel gets distorted. He also mentions things like the miracle of creation, incarnation, and the great end of the story when we will see the new heaven and the new earth.

I have been exposed to Smith’s writing enough to know that he is not interested in hype. His book, though a departure, in many ways, from tried and true narratives coming out of evangelical circles, is meant to expose people to the vast expanse and wonder of God and his work on earth. He is not trying to present some counter view just to sell books or create a social media buzz. He has felt compelled by the Holy Spirit to write this book and the two books that will follow this one – The Magnificent Journey and The Magnificient Mission.

Our culture is so full of outrage, so full of narrow-mindedness, so full of criticism that I wonder if we are allowed to enjoy anything anymore. Smith reminds us that God and his work is worth enjoying and is intended to be enjoyed and now is the time to start enjoying God’s magnificent story.

I am 42-years old. I now have a daughter who is a Freshman in college. I recently tried to write some things to her detailing what I wish I knew entering college. That got me thinking about myself as a young person and what would have been important to know when I was 20-years old. Here is a portion of that list.

1. Pursue Christ not feelings. I once spent time at a lake talking to God about all that I wanted to experience. I began most of my sentences with, “I want to know what it feels like to…” Looking back on that now, I am frightened by my foolishness. By God’s hand I didn’t fall into some self absorbed, emotion only fueled existence that only sought feelings at the expense of the transforming power of Christ and the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Christ is much more worthy of pursuit than my feelings. The latter is a dead end.
2. Being a Contrarian has its limits. I am one of those people who in a room full of liberals will be the most conservative in the room or in a room full of conservatives will be the most liberal in the room. I am not intentionally trying to be difficult, it is just that too much blind consensus makes me uncomfortable. So, in the evangelical world that I grew up in and continued to partake of in college, I tended to narrow my faith to a set of beliefs that were more personal preference than a soul stirring philosophy of life. More a reaction to what I saw around me than a productive sense of direction. In a way, I had been guilty of the same problems I saw in my evangelical circles. In an effort to be reactionary against what I thought were a narrow set of beliefs, I had built up my own reduced version of beliefs. The depth and breadth of the full gospel were lost to those I was reacting against and to myself.
3. Change is Possible. Twenty plus years later I am a different person. Many people hold back on this Growing Up in Christ thing because they don’t really think that change can happen. I can say that Christ has transformed my life but at 20-years-old I would have been skeptical. Today, I am a friendlier and more patient person. I am less selfish. I don’t let anger and bitterness consume me. I am more genuine and less likely to embrace falseness and pretense. Lust doesn’t have the hold on me as it once did. I understand more of the heart of Christ and have been able to learn from him in a variety of ways. It is not as important for me to always be right. Christ can change lives. It has happened to me.

Despite my shortness and my whiteness, my sport growing up was basketball. I loved the action meshed with specific skills meshed with constant competition. I was good enough to play on varsity at a large high school and then to play at a small non-scholarship college.

One of the reasons I progressed as a player was the fact that I played against tougher competition. That usually meant playing against and with players of a different skin color, specifically black. Marcus, Maurice, Chinda, Tyrone, and Sedrick were names of some of the players I commonly played against.

Tyrone was one of the best players to ever come out of our town. He was a quiet guy who had the physical skills to score while also being a presence defensively and under the basket.

I had been away to college for a few years but when I was back over Christmas Break or Spring Break I would go to a local gym for a noon basketball run. These games were pseudo organized; but usually if you wanted to play you had to be picked up by some players who needed an extra hand to make a full five.

Though I had been around this gym my whole life this was an adult crowd who weren’t too impressed by my stature and color. Even though it was my turn to get into a game some maneuvering would inevitably happen and my turn would get overlooked or I would just simply be denied access to the game. In the eyes of those present, I was too white, there was no way I was going to be any good. Until Tyrone showed up.

Tyrone knew me, knew that I could shoot, played hard, would get him the ball and would be deceptively good when the game needed me to be. While all of the other guys were finding ways for me to not get on their team, Tyrone always managed to include me on his squad. And then we would rule the gym. With these games, if you win you get to stay on the floor and another team gets a chance to beat you. If you are successful, you might play three or four games in a row and never have to sit out. We consistently won and I got to ride Tyrone’s coattails.

In this environment, I was the one that was being overlooked and judged based on my skin color, I was the one that didn’t get a fair shake because of ethnicity. I needed Tyrone to recognize and understand my talents and to see me as an asset to the success he was trying to accomplish and to pick me. This made me want to play harder to show my worth and to live up to Tyrone’s expectations of my contributions. Working together we accomplished more than we could on our own.

I in no way want to equal this one experience to what many African Americans have faced their whole life, but I want to show the value of moving beyond our superficial way of thinking.

If our thoughts just stop at skin color then we will never see the potential in a person, we will never recognize true talent in a wide variety of areas, we will never get to work together. Everyone talks about creating conversations or building dialogue with those of another race and this is no doubt helpful but conversations end and dialogue moves on to another group.

What we need is to recognize the unique talents and skills that can be found in any culture and blend that with our own talent and skills to create a better neighborhood, a better church, a better school, and a better society.

Tyrone did it for me. Who can I be a Tyrone for?

What about you?

I have seen some incredulous reactions over the last week regarding Charlottesville, Virginia. People are shocked at the fact that 50 years since the civil rights movement there are still white supremacists and Nazis. This doesn’t surprise me at all.

You see, 50 years ago there was legislated and structural racism. There were laws in place and public policies established that segregated and limited the rights of black people. These laws and policies were largely removed 50 years ago.

What we are seeing now is the limits of legislated measures. You can’t legislate the heart and when people still harbor hatred, bigotry, prejudice, and condescension in their heart things like Charlottesville can occur. The problem is, those that want to fight against racism have very little to work with because this issue is a heart issue and not an institutional issue. Reducing this whole problem to the simple removal of controversial symbols and statues may help but it still does nothing about the heart.

Part of the problem with the secularization of society is that the heart is barely acknowledged. Character is old-fashioned and considered naive and child’s play. These things are pushed to the side so we can tear down some statues and blast someone on social media. No one, not the KKK, not the Nazis, not the Antifa, not the Religious Right wants to deal with matters of the heart. Why? Because this is too hard. It is easier to join a mass bombardment of tweets than take the time, the silence, the prayer, and the work to change the heart. Also, one would have to acknowledge our own limitations and our own lack of imagination and compassion to develop a society or community that govern effectively. Dallas Willard says that, “there are no human solutions to human problems.”

So rally if you must, post something on Facebook if you need to, try to legislate something good for all but until we acknowledge our need for God and begin to rely on the leading of his Son to transform our heart and create in us a version of himself, we will be looking at the same problems, or worse, 50 years from now.

This is why I care so much about Growing Up and helping myself and others find transformation in Christ. It is only in Christ that we find solutions, we find change, we find hope, and we find a vision for the future.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

Jeremiah 29:11-13

Rightly or wrongly, Jeremiah 29:11 is one of the most quoted scriptures of the 21st Century. Bible scholars will look down their noses at those of us who use Jeremiah 29:11 out of context and don’t understand all of the political and historical background surrounding Judah and the loss of its best and brightest in the Exile to Babylon. But what makes verses like Jeremiah 29:11 and its wonderful follow-up 12 and 13 so profound is that I don’t have to know the context in order to gain truth and inspiration from it in a variety of ways.

As I have studied this passage and the entire chapter, what I realized is that those in exile were in a place they did not want to be – physically and spiritually. They thought they couldn’t experience God where they were because, in their minds, God could only be found in the Temple in Jerusalem. They were told by a few false prophets that they would be leaving soon, and they took a “what do we care” approach to their existence in Babylon. Why should they even try to make a living or contribute to society in this God-forsaken place if they would be soon exiting? Jeremiah, delivering God’s message, tells them otherwise. In the lead up to our passage, they were told to get married, plant crops, be good citizens, and try to prosper, even pray for the city they have been forced to.  God is asking them to trust him because he knows the plans, and they are good. He is asking them to seek him, even 800 miles from home because they will find him even there.[1]

Michael McDonough

My wife, Leah, was not in the country when my father died on July 8. She was in Zambia, Africa on a mission trip. She was in a place she wanted to be but not at that moment in time. In our fractured conversations over the phone, she asked me, “What do you want me to do?” She was hurting and emotional and wanting to help, but I didn’t want her traveling 7,000 miles by herself and my Dad wouldn’t have wanted that either. I told her, echoing the words of Jeremiah 29, to do what she was called to do: to serve the kids in the orphanage where they were staying, to share Christ’s love to the Zambian ladies they were on retreat with, and to boldly deliver the gospel message of Jesus. I believed and tried to express to her that we have to be faithful to our calling and to trust that a faithful God has the plans in place that would prosper what she was doing while allowing her to find God in the midst of such disconnect and distance from the one’s she loved.

On the night my Dad died, after a session led by my wife, 22 ladies gave their lives to Jesus. God was moving because Leah decided to prosper where she was planted and live up to the calling that brought her to Africa. She had every right to check out, to take an emotional break, to say everything was too much, but that was not why she was sent to Africa and that would not have been what my Dad would have wanted. She, in the midst of pain and uncertainty, sought God and found him in Zambia.

I was also in a place I didn’t want to be.. Who wants to watch their father die? But as my mom, sister, and I held hands and prayed over my deceased father, we had the assurance of all of the great promises of scripture, including Jeremiah 29:11-13. Even in our pain, we knew we had hope, and we knew we had a future. And as we sought God, he listened to us and came to us.

As verse 14 states, “I will be found by you, declares the Lord.” Are we willing to be found by God no matter what situation, good or bad, we find ourselves in?

[1] Peterson, Eugene. Run with the Horses: The Quest for Life at Its Best. Downers Grove, Illinois, InterVarsity Press, 2008.

In the last post, I discussed a few items that have helped me as I work through my grief in the loss of my father. Today, I mention three more that have been instrumental in restoring some sense of balance and stability in a challenging time.

Fasting –

Scot McKnight, in his excellent book on Fasting, makes the case that the Biblical point of fasting is to have an intentional spiritual response to a sacred moment. I thought of this as I was trying to think of ways to work through my grief.

The death of my father was a sad sacred moment that I needed to fully acknowledge and commemorate through my actions. So, I marked out a couple of days on my calendar, told my wife what I was doing, and went for it. It was kind of a forced way of remembering my dad.

So many times we choose to try to forget or even hope that we wouldn’t think about our loved one so much. I chose to make every hunger craving or pain an invitation to think about my Dad, his life, his legacy, and our times together. To thank God for him and to seek out God’s comfort in my sad reality.

There are many things I could say about these two days but they are hard to express. The main result was a balancing of my physical, spiritual, and emotional states. My physical side needed to be more tied to my spiritual rather than my emotional side – more faith and less bitterness, more trust and less anger, and more outward focus and less self focus. My spiritual side needed to go deeper and further rather than staying on the surface where my emotional side could take over. And my emotional side needed to find the healthy emotions such as love, hope, peace, and joy and not dwell on anger, bitterness, and envy.  My time of fasting helped bring more balance to these states.

Talking –

There are some people who will tell you everything they possibly can about a situation they find themselves in, whether you asked them about it or not. I am not one of those people. I assume most people don’t want to hear it so I don’t bother; they would rather talk about themselves than listen to me. But, in the face of life and death, I couldn’t play my usual, “I’m okay,” game. It would have been an obvious lie.

So when people ask me how I am doing regarding my Dad’s death, I try to express more of what is truly going on. I will speak about how difficult it has been, the things I have learned, the challenges of the particular moment, and what has been hard moving forward. A few friends from work have asked me for lunch and I have taken the opportunity to elaborate on the challenges of the summer and how I am trying to move forward. Though I do not like talking about myself for long stretches, it has been rewarding to be open and honest about what I am going through and sense the legitimate concern and kind words of a friend.

Dancing – 

In the last post, I mentioned how the Psalms have been helpful to me in dealing with my grief. Psalm 30 includes a line that reads, “You turned my wailing into dancing.” I don’t know what kind of dancing the Psalmist was thinking of when he wrote that but my kind of dancing included Kool and the Gang.

I had bought a CD of Kool and the Gang’s Greatest Hits for one of our daughters who enjoys a little funk in her music selection. One day as I was returning from work, a little beat down from the day and my circumstances, I hear that my daughter is playing the CD in the living room. Instead of dragging all of my stuff to my room and trying to decompress on my own, something moved me to dance to the music. It was spontaneous, fun, goofy, and a great relief. It was also a sign that I don’t have to be ensnared by sadness forever, that God is providing moments of joy and fun and that it is okay to let loose every now and then.