Lenten observances begin tomorrow. Many Christians will gather for worship on Ash Wednesday to mark the beginning of the season and enter a period of renewed commitment. This season focuses on repentance, prayer, fasting, endurance, and discipleship to Jesus.
Baylor University asked me to write a brief article introducing Lent to those who are unfamiliar. For the fourth year running, I helped Baylor’s Truett Seminary put together a Lenten Devotional Guide. You can find the entries here. If you’d like to receive the daily reflections by email, sign up by clicking the floating yellow button in the lower right-hand corner. Lastly, the full guide can be viewed and downloaded here, in which I have written a welcome and introduction.
The rays of truth proceed from the sun, through Augustine’s head, to his heart, which he holds in his hand on the right side of the painting. This image is an apt illustration of Augustine’s thought. Truth doesn’t end in the head but makes its way to the control center, which is the heart. He understood the heart as being central to our living. What someone loves is more important than what they can consciously know or express. Truth is foundational but insufficient.
I’d nuance this a little differently. I’d say truth is foundational and indispensable, and for it to have full transformational effect, it must move beyond thought to affection. And, while we might read the painting from left to right, and thus understand the process as such, there is also a relationship running in the other direction, from right to left. It is vital, therefore, for both heart and mind to be fixed on truth. If we love the wrong things, our thinking becomes distorted. If we think the wrong things, our hearts become subject to damage and discouragement. But if heart and mind are compelled by what is true, together, the entire person is transformed.
We must bear our crosses; self is the greatest of them; we are not entirely rid of it until we can tolerate ourselves as simply and patiently as we do our neighbor.
If we die in part every day of our lives, we shall have but little to do on the last.
What we so much dread in the future will cause us no fear when it comes, if we do not suffer its terrors to be exaggerated by the restless anxieties of self-love.
Bear with yourself, and consent in all lowliness to be supported by your neighbor.
O how utterly will these little daily deaths destroy the power of the final dying!
It’s the daily dying that gets me. It can be so unpleasant! And it is much easier to think of our crosses as something external to us, like an illness, or physical suffering, or a person who annoys us or gives us trouble, than it is to think of our greatest cross as the one thing we have with us no matter what we suffer and no matter where we go: ourselves.
But François Fénelon is correct. If we die to ourselves each day, all that will be left is the small, final step from physical death to the fuller, more complete experience of eternal life that is had when a person in Christ passes from the earthly to the heavenly realm.
The little, daily deaths are worth dying. Learning to die them is part and parcel of the spiritual journey. The school in which we learn to die them is the school of Jesus Christ, who not only calls us to this kind of cross bearing, but who preceded us on the way.
This happened in a staff meeting. Our team conducted a word association activity centered on the name of George Washington Truett. Most offered words like pastor and evangelist, and one noted that he was a fundraiser for Baylor University. Someone said something like staid; one of the photos of Truett hanging in our building is of him looking serious, as so many did when photographed in the olden days.
In 1891, Truett began working for Baylor and proceeded to raise $92,000 over two years to keep Baylor’s doors open. That year, Truett was just twenty-four years old. He had been ordained the previous year in 1890 via congregational discernment by the people of Whitewright Baptist Church in Whitewright, Texas. In 1887, Truett was called to serve as pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, where he would preach, shepherd, and lead for forty-seven years.
As we discussed Truett I recalled that my great grandfather, Loys Arnold, was converted to Christianity, baptized, and received as a member of First Baptist Dallas under the pastorate of George W. Truett in the 1920s. That night, I sent a general inquiry by email to FBC Dallas, asking if the church had a record.
I received an answer within a day. There it was. Loys Arnold was received for baptism on April 10, 1927, a Palm Sunday. Baptist people waste no time. He was baptized Wednesday, April 13. It was a good week for a baptism, with Easter straight ahead. Eight months later on December 7, 1927, Loys returned to Arp, Texas, where he would operate the Arnold Garage (the phone number was “1” for many years) and oversee a small Texas farmstead for the remainder of his days.
George W. Truett and the people of FBC Dallas made a difference in the life of my family. Now, I serve in an institution that is named in honor of George W. Truett. I’m thankful for that connection.
In 2010, the US Religious Census identified 35,496 independent congregations without any formal denominational affiliation. The lead researcher, Scott Thumma, told CT there were almost certainly more than that, but it was the most precise count anyone had done to that point.
Using the same method in 2020, the US Religious Census team found 44,319 nondenominational congregations, with an estimated 21 million adherents. That makes nondenominational Christians the first or second largest group of Protestants in America, depending on how one counts. The Southern Baptists have about 7,000 more churches, but 3.4 million fewer people.
The next largest Protestant group, the United Methodists, can only claim about half the number of people as Southern Baptists, and the denomination has lost a number of congregations in an ongoing church split since the Religion Census tallied at total of 30,051 in 2020.
When I’ve seen headlines chronicling the decline of traditional and mainline Protestant denominations, I’ve had the sneaking suspicion that some who have left Southern Baptist life, or Methodist life, or any one of the various other established Protestant bodies, have found spiritual community among autonomous, independent, non-affiliated, “nondenominational” local churches.
Additionally, because I have seen nondenominational church leaders and pastors who have displayed a deep passion for evangelism, a commitment to discipleship, the desire to serve, and openness toward and encouragement of the arts, creativity, and innovation, this data point doesn’t surprise me. Eventually, I thought researchers would find a way to capture what I suspected was happening on the ground. The rise of the “nones,” which the CT report also notes, has been a much discussed data point, but not the rise of the “nons,” which has been, up until now, hidden from view.
Some might think this development a good one and a sign that Christianity in America might be able to rebound from its decline, or at least that it is not dead yet. I think we’ll have to wait and see what it means. I rejoice when there are signs of vibrancy, growth, and transformation in the lives of those who take part in any Christian community. Autonomy, independence, and freedom from a denominational body brings with it certain advantages, including adaptability and flexibility within a rapidly shifting cultural environment. But there are also reasons to be wary, including the lack of accountability to a larger network of like-minded ministry partners, a less developed institutional memory regarding the doctrines and practices of a tradition, a susceptibility to celebrity, and clear divides that are broadly made and known between what is sound teaching and heretical leanings (at least among traditions with well-defined doctrinal commitments, rather than in those supporting “big tent” or doctrinally pluralistic approaches to connection).
Who knows what the future may hold? It may be that nondenominational churches create new kinds of connection, not necessarily formalized or solidified by way of organizational bloat and bureaucracy. Maybe new confessional movements will emerge. Maybe partnerships will be more informal and occasional rather than formal and ongoing. Maybe local commitments will take precedence over a global “brand” or “identity.”
Maybe this is a blip.
As institutional structures, I still think there is a place for the historic Protestant denominational churches. But God will need to renew them if they are to have a vibrant future. God can, and I hope God will. Maybe nondenominational congregations will give witness to what is possible, with God’s help. Otherwise, as John Wesley said in “Thoughts Upon Methodism,” the historic Protestant denominational churches in America will only display “the form of religion without the power.” The charitable among us will pray for God to renew us all, and maybe the not-so-charitable should, too.
Most Christians approach the study of the Bible with a genuine desire that the Holy Spirit would impart knowledge of how to love God more fully and serve him more faithfully. Openness to God and a desire to gain knowledge of God’s will are a wonderful beginning. Lifting one’s heart to God is an essential first step for spiritual growth. But God calls us to love him with all of our being, heart, mind, soul, and strength.
Gorman argues that the purpose of the New Testament writings is spiritual formation. The gospel stories, Acts, the epistles, and Revelation present a “theology seeking faith,” or “theology seeking spiritual formation in its hearers and readers.”
Seeking God with the heart, deepening faith by applying the mind, asking God to sanctify the soul, and exercising God-given strength to act upon conviction work together to move the believer toward Christian maturity. If you begin with a heart set upon God, wonderful! Go further. Engage the mind, open the soul, and ask for the strength to live a life pleasing to God.
First, even if you lived a wretched life, the preacher shouldn’t lie about that. Maybe they should tell us the truth. Maybe the best thing we could hear is that you were a rotten person. Maybe we should make it a goal to live as exemplars of virtue, rather than as warnings against vice.
Second, the proper focus of a Christian funeral is God, not the deceased. A death is only the occasion for gathering. A Christian funeral is a service of worship. We hope we can give thanks for the person who has died. Sadly, there are cases where this is very hard to do.
Third, if you live in such a way as to be remembered by others as a “good” person, I do not want to dismiss the positive outcomes that could result from such an aim. But beware. We do good things all the time from bad motives. It would be better to live for the glory of God, realizing that all is a gift, than from a self-aggrandizing motivation.
Fourth, at a bare minimum, the truth that should be told at a Christian funeral is the truth of the gospel: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. That is why we can grieve, but not as those who are without hope.
In general usage, a “conversion” marks a change from one religion to another, or a shift from an irreligious to religious profession/stance. At the time of Paul’s experience (a scant couple of years after Jesus’ crucifixion), the Jesus-movement wasn’t what we know and think of as a self-standing “religion.” It was more a rather exclusive new sect or movement within the larger Jewish tradition. (And it must be emphasized that Paul’s “persecution” of Jesus-followers was not directed at “Christians” but solely at fellow Jews whom he must have regarded as having seriously problematic in their beliefs and practices.)
More significantly, Paul refers to that experience that prompted his shift in direction as a “revelation” (apokalypsis) and a “calling” (kaleo) as in Galatians 1:11-17. On the other hand, Paul can refer to those Gentiles who accepted his gospel message as having “converted” or “turned” (epistrepho) to God and having turned away from their ancestral gods (“idols”), as in 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10. So, in Paul’s thinking Gentiles/pagans “convert” from their polytheistic practice to worship and serve “a true and living God.” But Jews such as he instead come to right understanding of what their ancestral deity requires of them.
Truett Seminary has compiled a devotional guide for the upcoming Lenten season. I contributed a couple of entries and assisted in the editorial process. The guide outlines daily readings from Matthew and offers reflections from students, staff, and faculty that are inspired by the prescribed Scripture text for that day. Entries variously include exposition, poetry, imaginative prose depictions, guided prayer, recommended practices, and questions for reflection.
Back in 2012 Federico worked at ESPN, and he wrote a terrible headline about Jeremy Lin, who played at that time for the New York Knicks. I remember reading Federico’s headline at the time, disbelieving that someone could fail to see the implications that would follow from their choice of words. I vaguely recall taking a screen shot in my office at home and saying, “Well, that’s a mess up.” Federico apologized and said he made an honest mistake. Soon thereafter he was let go by ESPN.
The whole experience was deeply devastating. People were wicked, social media outrage avalanches kept rolling, and death threats were hurled toward Federico. You can imagine how he felt. But Federico eventually was invited to lunch with Jeremy Lin. He apologized. Lin accepted his apology. Federico tells how that conversation proved to healing, of benefit for his mental health. Life went on.
He got a new job. During the lunch hour, he would go on walks, and he would pass by the open doors of a Catholic church. Martin Kessler reports:
“On one of my [Federico’s] walks, I happened upon a Catholic church, a busy basilica in the middle of downtown Stamford that was having Mass during the day,” he says. “And I didn’t even know that Catholics go to Mass on weekdays, and not just on Sundays. But the doors were open. I could see them going to church in there and [thought] maybe that could be cool, but, ‘Nah, I’m not that kinda guy.’
“So on the first day I go past it, and second day I go past it. And, how biblical, on the third day I decide I’m going to go to church in the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday. And I went into this 12:10 p.m. Mass. The regulars kind of called it the ‘suit and tie Mass’ because all the businessmen and women would leave their offices and come to Mass on their lunch break. And I started going to Mass every day on my lunch break. And it’s this oasis of stillness and silence and ritual, and it was just such a sharp contrast that it called to me.”
Federico noticed that, before Mass, the priest would hear confession.
“And often the line was so long for people going to confession that the priest would have to apologize to the five or six people still waiting in line, because he had to run up and start the Mass on time,” Federico says. “And, every day, I would see on this priest’s face this, like, anguish. So I was watching him one day, and I said, ‘Lord, if only we had more priests, we could have two lines of confession going —’ Ohhh, ‘If only we had more priests.’ “
Federico says that as a kid people had told him he should grow up to be a priest. But he hadn’t really taken the idea seriously. Until now.
That’s a powerful turn. Federico now serves as a priest. He shares how his experiences have helped him to relate to people who are suffering and to minister to them. He has an experiential reference point from which to understand how others feel when they are angry at God or believe God has abandoned them.
I enjoyed reading this story as a sports fan, but more so as a Christian. Check it out.
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