BONHOEFFER: PASTOR, MARTYR, PROPHET, SPY
I like Dietrich Bonhoeffer. First, he’s got a tremendous last name. Second, he’s written some outstanding books including the Cost of Discipleship and Life Together. Life Together, his treatise on community – written long before ‘community’ became a buzz word, is my all-time favorite Christian book. I like the prolific Eric Metaxas as well. In addition to Bonhoeffer, he’s written a well-received biography of William Wilberforce, the kids’ picture book Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving and some great Veggie Tales scripts.
Though I bought the book when it first came out, it took me quite some time to wade through Metaxas’ best-selling biography, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. I have a degree in journalism. I like to write short sentences, short paragraphs, and short papers. I could never write a book. At this stage of my life, I don’t read many 500+ page books either. While Metaxas’ book was excellent, I thought it was a bit too long.
CROSS SHAPED GOSPEL
The Cross Shaped Gospel by Bryan Lorrritts is the best book I’ve read so far this year. Pastor of Fellowship Bible Church, in Memphis, TN, Lorritts maintains that the gospel and the cross are so closely related that we cannot see one without the other. “The gospel is the cross. In fact, we need not look far to get a very clear picture of the gospel; just look at its shape. The two beams of the cross – one vertical, the other horizontal – tell us all we need, to know about the gospel. The cross-shaped gospel has to do with man being reconciled to God (the vertical beam) and to one another (the horizontal beam) through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Messiah who died in our place for our sins.”
Today, some believers disconnect the two beams and undermine the power of the gospel. When we disconnect the vertical and horizontal beams, the Christ-follower and the church limp along, not functioning at full capacity. Lorritts suggests that we reach out by reaching up. “Our relationship with God is always first. But once you reach up to the Savior – or He reaches out to you – the response to His grace is to reach out to your neighbor. In fact, we make the gospel appealing to our neighbors and the world by our acts of compassion.”
While some facets of society, the workplace for example, have become increasingly diverse, it seems that our churches remain socioeconomically and racially segregated. I was curious to see what Brian, who is an African American and leads an ethnically-diverse church staff and congregation in inner-city Memphis, had to say about such things.
“Biblical community has always celebrated diversity, but because of the centrality of the gospel, diversity does not become a rallying cry; Jesus does. What this means is that Christ-followers have a reference point, a north star if you will, to challenge and encourage one another, to genuinely love one another and experience what the writers of the New Testament called fellowship. My race never becomes the focal point in Christocentric community; Jesus does.”
He continues, “Our conversations on race and our attempts to bring people together should not be divorced from the cross, because when this happens we turn into mere sociologists, diminishing the power of the crucified Christ. Racial diversity is not essential for salvation; the gospel of Jesus Christ is. However, where the gospel is truly and authentically preached and lived, we should expect to see diversity.”
HELP, THANKS, WOW
Several years ago, one of my pastor-friends shared Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith with me. I loved it. Though my perspective on faith is thoroughly evangelical and I vote conservatively, I generally feel out of place in the ‘evangelical subculture.’ I was not raised in the church. I rarely attended Sunday School and my mother has never gone to a Beth Moore Bible Study. That’s why I like Anne Lamott. Next to her, I look like the proverbial church lady. How many grandmothers do you know with dreadlocks?
Lamott, whose essays regularly appear at Salon.com, has experienced substance abuse and been both a single mother and grandmother. Even though I’m not a mom, I thoroughly enjoyed both Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year and Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son’s First Son. If you like to write, take a look at Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Though she writes from a Christian perspective, Lamott’s language is sometimes edgier than other faith-based authors.
In Help, Thanks, Wow, one of Lamott’s shorter books, she describes “three types of prayers – asking for assistance, appreciating the good we witness, and feeling awe at the world – that get us through the day and show us the way forward.”
The first prayer Lamott addresses is the prayer for help. She writes, “Most good honest prayers remind me that I am not in charge, that I cannot fix anything, and that I open myself to being helped by something, some force, some friends, some something. These prayers say. “Dear Some Something, I do not know what I am doing. I can’t see where I am going. I am getting more lost, more afraid, more clenched. Help.”
The second prayer Lamott addresses is the prayer of thanksgiving. “Saying and meaning ‘Thanks’ leads to a crazy thought: What more can I give? We take the action first, by giving – and then the insight follows, that this fills us. Sin is not the adult bookstore on the corner. It is the hard heart, the lack of generosity, and all the isms, racism and sexism and so forth.”
Wow is the third and final form of prayer addressed by Lamott. What is wow? “‘Wow’ means we are not dulled to wonder. We click into being fully present when we’re stunned into that gasp, by the site of a birth, or images of the World Trade Center towers falling, or the experience of being in a fjord, at dawn, for the first time. ‘Wow’ is about having one’s mind blown by the mesmerizing or the miraculous: the veins in a leaf, birdsong, volcanoes.”
TROUBLED MINDS
I’ve long believed that the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of our being are connected. For me, the church is much more than a building. The church is family. Like all families, some churches are healthier or than others. These two broad concepts impact how I view the church’s role in serving those who experience mental illness.
Amy Simpson, author of Troubled Minds: Mental Illness and the Church’s Mission, is editor of the Christianity Today website – Gifted for Leadership – and managing editor of marriage and parenting resources for Today’s Christian Woman. Her father served as a pastor for ten years and her mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia when Amy was young. In her book, Simpson shares from her personal experience as well as the research she did for CT.
How common is mental illness? “According to the National Institute of Mental Health and other experts, about one in four adults – a little more than 25 percent of Americans ages 18 and older – suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. Yes, one in four. That equates to around fifty million people in the United States. Because many mental illnesses (like depressive episodes) are short-term and not chronic, a higher percentage of people are affected by mental illness at some point in their lives.”
Though 80 percent of 500 church leaders Simpson surveyed, said they believe mental illness is ‘a real treatable and manageable illness caused by genetic, biological or environmental factors,’ only 12.5 percent of them said mental illness is openly discussed in a healthy way in their church.
What can/should congregations/congregants do to support congregants experiencing mental illness and their families? When planning Sunday School lessons, the first question I ask is: What do I want the children to remember or What do I want them to be able to do? On pages 180-195 of her book, Simpson provides a list of things – in order of complexity – that churches and individuals can do to assist those impacted by mental illness.
She states, “I believe Christ is calling his church to a great outpouring of love, overflowing from the bottomless well of living water he has placed within each of his people. I believe that he wants that love to reach people with mental illness and lift them in a great wave of healing and hope – right where they are, among those our society considers untouchable, avoidable and justifiably condemned to the fringes.”
Does Isabelle get dizzy when
she sleeps with her head upside down?
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