Ignorant Protestant

As the football season winds down for high school, it’s just getting exciting for colleges and fantasy football fanatics. By the way, have you seen fantasy church and even fantasy congress? However, it’s not football that IP wants you ignorant Protestants to get ready for; it’s Advent.

"What’s Advent?" I’m ashamed to admit that until a few years ago, I would have asked the same question. Unfortunately, if you currently attend a church that has two worship services on a Sunday, you are probably still asking that question. In fact, if your morning service is characterized by Welcome/Announcements… Music… (perhaps an occasional solo) a Testimony, video, or isolated scripture reading… Preaching… (concluded by a fervent evangelistic appeal and an "invitation" replete with 3-4 stanzas of insert your favorite hymn), Advent may sound like a a great name for a new Pontiac SUV to you.

Here at IP, we hope to change that and encourage church members and leaders to reconnect with the ancient church by implementing some of the traditions and celebrations that they commemorated to encourage their corporate faith journey.

Advent is the beginning of the church year for denominations and churches that follow the western church calendar. It begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and concludes on Christmas Eve, December 24. For the eastern church, the church year begins on September 1. The liturgical year is different for Eastern and Western churches and dates back to the "Great Schism" in 1054, although the church had been divided for many years before that in doctrine and issues of authority.

(If you’re totally ignorant of the distinction and history of the Roman Catholic Church and its split from what is not called the Eastern Orthodox Church, you’re definitely an ignorant protestant. Read up. Ask around. Google. Wikipedia. Whatever floats your boat. But don’t remain uninformed. What you’ll discover will enrich, encourage, and shape your faith expression for the rest of your life.)

Dennis Bratcher has an excellent article over at CRI/The Voice explaining the seasons of the church year.

Advent this year will begin on December 3. It’s a deeply meaningful and hopeful way for your church, family and friends to prepare your hearts for the celebration of the Incarnation. What do you plan to do?

Mark Dever at Together for the Gospel blog has written an insightful and incisive essay about what I’ll call the Church Membership Scandal. Many of our Protestant denominations today judge their health by their numbers – whether in attendance or on their rolls. Dever claims this is not only unbiblical but patently sinful. I encourage you to stop by and read over it and post your thoughts there or here.

Church membership is an albatross around the neck of the Protestant church. Rather than judging the health and success of the body of Christ by biblical and spiritual means, we elevate those churches and leaders with the largest followings, the most resources, and the most hype. How can the tide be turned? What can we as leaders and lay people do to encourage our church to focus upon Christ, His glory, and living out the Gospel?

The title of this post comes from one of my favorite quotes in O Brother, Wherefore Art Thou? I think Delmar says it to Pete and Everett when they are arguing about who is going to be the leader. What makes it funny is that they are all chained together at the time. Anyway that’s how I feel right now writing my first post ever on Ignorant Prostestant. I feel like we are all together and ignorant whether we want to be or not. I am excited about this journey of exploration and sharing it with fellow sojourners.

I recently took a short exploration through the writing The Practice of the Presence of God. Have you heard of it? Have you read it? If so, post your thoughts or favorite quote. If not, you should read it if you have ever thought any of the following:

• Being a Christian is too complicated.
• I can’t pray because my mind is so cluttered.
• Does my work have real meaning?
• If I could just escape the hustle and bustle of life I would be a better worshipper.
• Praying without ceasing is impossible in our culture.
• I don’t seem to have joy.

This is not a modern day self-help book; it is simply the conversations and letters of Nicholas Herman of Lorraine. He is better known as Brother Lawrence. Have you ever heard of Brother Lawrence? He was a balding, slightly rotund, tobbacco-chewing deacon at the church I grew up in. Not really but that is my mental image anytime “brother” precedes someone’s name. What mental image do you get?

Actually Brother Lawrence was an uneducated kitchen helper with a past. Amazingly his life and his words have impacted thousands. He probably would have passed into oblivion if someone had not written down his words and kept his letters. I would be surprised if you’re an Ignorant Protestant like me and you are familiar with him. Brother Lawrence was a seventeenth century mystic who lived in a Carmelite order in France. If you unfamiliar with the words mystic, Carmelite, or order then you are probably an IP for sure. The reality is that as an evangelical (descendant of the protestors), our history diverged before Brother Lawrence was ever born. This is unfortunate. But this is also what ignorantprotestant.com is all about – so you are “saved.” Sorry, poor choice of words. I know that being saved means you made a decision in an invitation at church camp during puberty. I simply meant that this is what this blog is all about. We can become “unignorant” together. Are you in? I am! I’m with you fellars.

So read The Practice of the Presence of God. It can be purchase at Amazon.com for a few bucks and takes about twenty minutes to read. When you finish, post your thoughts. Here is one of my favorite quotes.

” The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.”

Wow! I have two children and one on the way. There is a lot of noise and clatter in my kitchen but I do not usually even think about God – much less possess tranquillity. I want it!

Let me give you a warning. This is not a modern self-help book with five steps to this or three principles for that. You will have to actually slow down and think about his words and life. Afterwards I promise you will want to slow down and think about Christ’s words and life.

IP is excited to welcome Neal Nelson on board as an author. Neal is the Baptist Collegiate Minister at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. Neal has been a collegiate minister for ten years now and brings a dynamic perspective on the ancient church as its synergy with current church life and faith.

IP wants to welcome Jackie Flake on board with us! Jackie is pastor of discipleship at Eastside Baptist Church in Fort Smith, Arkansas. His insightful and incisive thinking will be a welcome addition to IP. We’re excited about what is coming up here at IP and hope that things will be rolling along at a steady clip soon! We’re also talking to a few others at this point to extend the IP authorial network. If you know of someone who might like to contribute, please send an email or comment.

Imagine you’re standing on a beach. The tide comes in washing over your bare feet. The water is cold and it crickles as it leaves. Your feet shift a few inches down as the sand is washed out from under them. Your dark-colored t-shirt warms up as you stand in the beating sun, and you feel your skins growing tighter as it tans.Now imagine you’re out by your mailbox at your house. A simple, routine task of checking the mail. A bird sings, a wasp flying by causes you to swat and run a bit. As you stand there on the walk, absently sorting your junk mail, you feel the same sensation as above. Water washing over your feet. Cold, wet. Your feelings are not quite the same in this context, are they? You would immediately look down and around in confusion, looking for its source. If you were to see the whole neighborhood in several inches of water, you would probably (rightly) suspect something was seriously wrong. If the water continued to rise, you’d take steps, wouldn’t you?

Such is the situation of the church in America today. It believes that the water lapping at its knees is routine and expected. Unfortunately, it’s not at the beach. It has not awakened yet that the tide coming in is different than before. This water is in the wrong place.

The church still thinks it’s in the modern era and is continuing to function as if that were the case. But it’s time to wake up and take steps before we drown in irrelevance. It’s not that our methods can simply be adjusted. It’s not that our doctrines are under attack. The way we have viewed the world for 500 years has slowly been washed away, like sand under our feet. Yet we have clung to our sand castles, hoping that they will remain.

It’s time for a worldview adjustment and re-education.

I hope ignorantprotestant can assist you with that process of discovery.

We will be providing you with source material to educate yourself, to learn and equip yourself, for the exciting journey and adventure of living as Christ’s ambassadors in a new world. Are you ready? Because that world is already here.

If you want a great read on a introductory article on modernism vs. postmodernism, go here.

I’m excited about the development of this blog! Let me tell you why I started it…

I grew up in Southern Baptist circles. I deeply appreciate and continue to respect that American tribe of believers for their nurturing of my faith. In 2003, I resigned from being an SB campus minister on a small campus in southeast Arkansas. My family and I felt called to start a new church in our community, one that would be vastly different from the very traditional churches and denominational structures of our area and state. You can read more about that on our church site.

Over the past 3 years, I’ve experienced and seen so much of life outside of denominational circles, that I’ve been deeply impacted and convicted about just how confining those structures actually were and are. I have been deeply burdened by how similar American churches look to American businesses, school, and other organizations. Many are run by the same principles and processes. I’ve seen very few that are earnestly attempting to be “led by the Spirit.” It seems that the GOCC (God Of Common Sense) reigns supreme in Protestantism. So much of American church life lacks spiritual vitality and vibrancy.

I began to look further. There’s not time in this post to trace my mental meanderings through a study of American revivalism, the Keswick movement, Puritanism, and finally to the Protestant Reformation. The PR is where so many of our prominent churches and leaders identify their heroes from. I began to ask myself… “Self, why do so many of us stop there… with Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and others?”

It was then that I began to be deeply impressed that the PR, with all its needed correction of the 16th century RCC (Roman Catholic Church), was also a reaction, a deeply powerful and polarizing reaction.The pendulum was on one side, and as the Reformers identified the issues of their day and began to take their stands (some to the death) on them, the pendulum began to swing back. That’s what my little pea-brain sees.

Today, however, the pendulum of the Reformation has swung far to the other side and we stand in need of great correction and re-identification as the church of Christ. There was much that was lost in the PR in the 15th-16th centuries as a result of the polarizing effects of the conflict. Today, most Protestants are ignorant of valuable, historic, deeply significant, and even mysterious elements of the ancient church. Some may not be recoverable. But many can be.

It is the purpose of this site to link us to our past, to willingly admit our ignorance and seek the wisdom of Christ through His Word and His people. Ours is an Ancient-Present-Future faith. May God increase our love for Him, for each other, and consequently for His Bride, as we shine like a city set on a hill. Let us no longer be ignorant!

Practically, here’s the plan…

1. Enlist regular contributors from a variety of Protestant backgrounds.
2. Create a healthy, positive, and insightful ongoing dialogue related to Protestantism.
3. Assist churches, leaders, and denominations in reclaiming the ancient-future faith established by Christ and the apostles.
4. Identify theological, cultural, and philosophical drifts which impact the Protestant church.

And away we go…