who needs a hot-shot lawyer anyway??

not that i'd ever advocate going out and trying to kill somebody, but the next time you're hauled in for attempted murder, conventional wisdom would say go hire the best lawyer you can find, right? well, not so fast there, habeus corpus breath! seems there's a new way to beat the rap now... forget oj's dream team, just remember this name: james e. sheffield, and the best new defense since the insanity plea for the guilty... how about the insanity plea for the attorney. read all about it...

an optimist? yup, i are one!

after having gone back and forth on the comments for the “its called discipleship” post, this started out as a reply to the latest comment, but it got so long I decided to do it as its own post. in a nutshell, the topic at hand has to do with a statistic put forth by george barna concerning the disparity between the percentage of church-goers who claim that God is the number one priority in their lives (15%), and what pastors who were asked the same question about their congregants believed that number to be (70%).

several commenters (<--this got a red line as i typed it in microsoft word, so i guess it isn’t a real word!) had put forth the idea that the pastors got it so wrong because by nature they are an overly optimistic lot, and that optimism is a defense mechanism designed to guard against discouragement and/or termination. i had started to think that i was the one that first used the word "optimism" to explain the seemingly poor grasp that some pastors appear to have on where their members are spiritually, but that first appeared in somebody else's comment (i wont go into who said what... you can click the link to the post and read the comments there). i was about to say that i brought this all upon myself by using that term :-)

it has been suggested that pastors cannot lead people where they do not wish to go (i.e: if some of the church members don’t want to be discipled, you cant make them), which I agree with 100%, and that I should allow for a bit of positive thinking for pastors who find themselves in such a position (which would be any pastor who takes on the responsibility of trying to take their people to a deeper level of commitment to Christ). although i was never a senior pastor, i did spend 13 years in youth ministry on church staffs, so i was once a "person in such a position"... i dont speak as an uninformed outsider. and while i wasnt fired from my last church because of being a realist concerning spiritual depth, it was a huge factor in my decision to voluntarily leave that church and church staff ministry in general. in another of the churches where i served as youth minister, while i wasnt outright fired, i was pressured to resign because "the numbers werent there."

as i said in an earlier comment, i once played the "numbers" game, as many do... just go to any gathering of youth ministers, ed. ministers or pastors, and inevitably the first question is "so, how many you running... in sunday school/in worship/on wednesday night/on sunday night?" and because success has been so closely associated with "how many you running?", the typical pastor often defaults to attendance as an indicator of the spiritual health of his church. when i said NO to the numbers game and started trying to take my kids deeper, thats when the doody hit the fan. i'm not against growing a church, but you cant ignore the need to give your folks the opportunity to go deeper.

take a look at rick warren's purpose-driven church model. nobody doubts that warren is into growing a church, and saddleback is huge. but part of the premise behind purpose-driven is to always be striving to bring those in the outer circles in to a deeper level of commitment. there are pastors who understand this and recognize the necessity for it... and there are those that think the numbers in and of themselves are the measure of spiritual health.

it was pointed out to me that pastors are “statistically” more optimistic. i think (and hope!) that not just pastors, but Christians in general are statistically more optimistic. if our hope is in Christ, we have the greatest reason of anyone to be optimistic!! i cant see where i ever said that it isnt a good thing for a pastor to try to be optimistic. believe me, if a down-in-the-mouth pessimist ever came to my church in view of a call, i'd vote "NO" in a heartbeat! i just don’t accept that optimism is a good substitute for realism, and for that matter, i don’t see how they are mutually exclusive.

though i may not have sounded very optimistic when i wrote that barna's findings "paint a rather bleak picture of the state of the Church in america", my optimism lies in the state of the Church world-wide. in china, vietnam, cambodia and a number of middle east countries (all places where persecution runs rampant), Christianity is not only growing numerically, but the people hunger for the Word, and they hunger to know God more intimately... and many of them are willing to die for the privilege of doing so! additionally, according to Christian history institute, the Christian population in africa has grown from 8-9% of the population in 1900, to 45% in 2000, and they report in the 20^th century alone almost 2 million Christian martyrs in africa, not including another 1.5 million who have been slaughtered during civil strife in rwanda, burundi and sudan. (even in a free country such as south korea, which is second only to the united states [and gaining fast] in the number of missionaries sent, Christianity is alive and thriving). while i may sound like the numbers-quoting pastors that i’ve been critical of in these 2 posts, it’s the numbers of people worldwide that don’t just claim the title of Christian, but seek to know and serve Christ more passionately - especially those that have died for their faith - that speak to me… shallow Christians will not put their life on the line for the sake of the Kingdom. they’ll barely sacrifice a football game for a worship service. if history is any indicator, it just may take a great persecution here in america before pastors and members alike wake up.

its called...

i've recently started receiving a very useful little email... the barna update. i must have forgotten to click (or unclick) some box when i ordered his latest book, "revolution," because i dont normally sign up for inbox-clutterers when i plunder around peoples' websites. in any event, i'm glad i get this one, because its been quite an enlightening experience. the update links to barna.org where the statistical results of his surveys, and their breakdowns, can be found. so far... 2 updates received, 2 posts in the works!

from the dec 20 update... "12 most significant findings from 2006 surveys"
there were a number of items from these 12 outcomes that, when taken together, paint a rather bleak picture of the state of the local church in america.

for starters, there was a great disparity between the percentage of church attenders who said God was a top priority in their lives, and what the average pastor believed that percentage to be. a paltry 15% of regular church-goers said their relationship with God was top-priority; however, the typical pastor believed that 70% of the adults in their churches considered their relationship with God to be their #1 priority. barna found that pastors based their conclusions on things like worship and sunday school attendance and, unbelievably to me, how many participated in the singing, rather than indicators such as level of spiritual maturity, level of commitment to loving and serving God and people, the nature of each member's personal ministry, involvement in community service, accountability for spiritual development and lifestyle and use of resources to advance the kingdom of God, among others.

another finding: just 21% of adults consider themselves to be holy, by their own admission large numbers have no idea what "holiness" means and only 35% believe that God expects people to become holy.

additionally: 81% of teens say they have attended a church for a period of at least two months during their teenage years... however, 61% of today’s twenty-somethings had been churched at one point during their teen years but they are now spiritually disengaged (i.e., not actively attending church, reading the Bible, or praying).

also: 5 years after 9/11, there has been no lasting influence on america's faith... despite an intense surge in religious activity and expression in the weeks immediately following 9/11 the faith of americans is virtually indistinguishable today compared to pre-attack conditions, based on 19 faith measures that were studied.

coupled with the increase in the number of people of faith who consider themselves to be revolutionaries (defined as born again people who have made their faith in God the highest priority in their life, who believe that their faith has greatly transformed their life, and who often express and experience their faith through alternative forms of the Church), and the number of believers who are migrating toward house churches, i draw this conclusion...

the average pastor is clueless about the spiritual health of his flock, and totally out-of-touch with how little influence the local church is having on the spiritual formation of its members. the vast majority of pastors, at least according to barna's findings, are still relying on numbers to tell them how great a job they think they're doing. it all boils down to the non-existence of discipleship... a curse which has plagued local churches for decades. in their quest for sheer numbers... worship attendance, sunday school attendance, baptisms (and, i believe in many cases, the bragging rights that go along with high numbers)... churches of every denomination have put discipleship on the back burner... if its still even on the stove at all. and what we've seen is an influx of shallow, fire-insurance-carrying "Christians" (or as a former pastor of mine calls them, "two-fold children of hell"... at first they were lost but at least they knew they were... then they were fed a watered-down, rose garden version of Christianity, and now they're lost but they think they're saved).

many churches are doing a jam-up job of filling the pews, but failing miserably at making disciples. and because the american church by and large has forsaken discipleship, we have pastors who far over-estimate the spiritual maturity of their flocks, the folks who sit under their preaching have no idea what it means to be holy or that they're even supposed to BE holy, we're losing our high school graduates in alarming numbers, and when people do search for something deeper, something solid to hold on to, such as what happened immediately following 9/11, they come to our churches and they dont find it there, because quite frankly, in too many cases it's NOT.

so far, not too awful bad... SO FAR

here's a first... and something you can be sure you wont see much more of here... a political post. yesterday i was set to go with this little masterpiece i put together at some sign generator site...
... but i decided against it. dont get me wrong... seeing nancy pelosi on tv yesterday in her first appearance as speaker of the house, looking for all the world like she'd just won an academy award, gave me a VERY uneasy feeling. but reading the online news this morning, i was rather impressed with a few things that have happened so far (the supremely arrogant charles rangel booting dick cheney out of his office notwithstanding).

for starters, the house voted 430-1 to ban lawmakers from accepting gifts and free trips from lobbyists (republican dan burton of indiana was the "1"... whats his deal??)

then there's the PAYGO rule, which requires tax cuts to have corresponding cuts in government spending or tax increases elsewhere to pay for them (personally i prefer the former). i'm no economist, but just from working the ol' household budget i know enough to know if you're going to decrease the income source, you better decrease the spending too, or else find another source of income. that aint rocket science, yet republicans, who are supposed to be for smaller government, managed to run up record deficits since the '94 GOP takever (and more specifically, since bush took office). for democrats, the downside to PAYGO is that it endangers their efforts to cut student loan rates and increase medicare benefits.

also, on a somewhat related note, the house passed a rule-change that requires congressmen to publicy disclose their support for pet projects (now referred to as "earmarks" although i've always been rather partial to the term PORK ). according to folks whose job it is to keep track of these things, pork barrel projects have been the main culprit in runaway spending and the resulting deficits we're saddled with today.

so, i'm somewhat encouraged by these two developments, and even more encouraged by the fact that a number of republican voted for the rule-changes as well. suddenly it seems that democrats are becoming fiscal conservatives. but the other shoe hasnt dropped yet. dems are traditionally tax-and-spend, and i suspect that even though they seem to want to curb spending right now, there's still the matter of president bush's tax cuts which are due to expire in 2010. dont look for a democrat-led congress to renew those, and dont be surprised if at some point they even try to repeal them before that time. and dont say i didnt tell you so if they actually increase taxes at some point.

of course, there's also the matter of their social and ethical agenda, which is horrific. from abortion rights to embryonic stem cell research to their interpretation of the establishment clause to entitlement programs, the democratic party is a disaster.

so maybe they're just riding the wave right now. i remember when republicans took control of congress in '94, it was euphoric... the "contract with america"! but you know what they say (actually "they" would be lord acton in this case)... "power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely." back then, democrats joked that it was more like the "contract ON america" and in the end, it sort of turned out that way to some extent. it took roughly 40 years for the country to finally get fed up with the way the democrats were running the show, yet it only took 12 years for voters to get sick of republican leadership... not very encouraging. and with another possible supreme court vacancy to fill in the next few years, i'm not the least bit optimistic that we'll keep the slim conservative majority there... so much for overturning roe v. wade.

these things run in cycles though, and the country's love affair with democrats will wane over time, and one of these days the tide will turn again. i hope we'll have learned some lessons in that time. of course it was the unpopularity of the war in iraq that got the republicans in a bind, but ethics violations, moral failures and just plain ARROGANCE were a part of the problem too.

jeff noble often espouses community involvement over at monticello live, and that's one of the things that makes this country great... ANYONE can have influence, whether on the local level or the national stage. after watching the promise of the '94 republican revolution turn just plain revolting, the need for more Christians to get involved in government is more urgent than ever. at the very least, GET OUT AND VOTE YOUR CONVICTIONS! voter turnout among Christians is traditionally very low, despite the fact that the Christian vote is often credited with putting president bush, and republicans in general, in office to beging with. dont lose faith in the system. we still have the best form of government of any country in the world... its just a matter of getting the right person for the job, regardless of party loyalty.

IF YOU'RE NOT REGISTERED TO VOTE, GET OUT THERE AND DO IT! IF YOU ARE REGISTERED, DO YOUR HOMEWORK, RESEARCH THE CANDIDATES AND GO VOTE YOUR CONVICTIONS!! after all, its the only way to earn the right to complain...