For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. (1 Timothy 4:8)

Every Monday our staff gathers together to hear updates, share stories of ways we see God at work in our community, and to be re-grounded in the Gospel that motivates our work together. But last week, we did something unusual, something we’ve never done before. A boot camp.

It was a great opportunity to get outside, move around, and have some fun together and encourage one another. Here are a few pictures (and you can view more on our Facebook page here).

Many people in Los Angeles like to work out; exercise has a good reputation. Spiritual exercises, on the other hand – the church’s heritage of daily practices like prayer, Scripture reading, singing psalms – are often viewed with suspicion.

And some of that suspicion is merited:

Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism… These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence. (Colossians 2)

Nothing leads to spiritual pride more quickly or deeply than seeing yourself as more “spiritually fit” than others, looking down on those who seem less disciplined or committed as you believe yourself to be.

The Christian life is not meant to be framed on a wall and admired, but to be lived. To be sure, doctrines are indispensable for this practical wisdom. But like any skill – like golf or tennis or carpentry – theology’s ideas exist to be lived out in practice. That is, theology is meant to produce not texts, or ideas, or opinions, but new people. And that doesn’t happen accidentally.

Don’t get me wrong. Spiritual exercises don’t change us. Only the grace of God changes us. But spiritual exercises are some of God’s appointed means for His grace to flow into our lives. These daily exercises are avenues for us to work out our salvation.

The Christian life, therefore, should be a disciplined life, a life of discipleship shaped through spiritual exercise. These exercises don’t contribute one iota to our standing with God. But, by God’s continuing grace, they may increase our experience and assurance of that standing.

Led by the Spirit of Christ, we participate in Christ’s renewal of our lives. Christ always gets the credit; any growth in grace is due to Him. But we play a necessary, albeit secondary, role. In short, we have to work out, spiritually, if we expect to be spiritually fit, attuned to the grace of the Gospel in our daily lives.

Spiritual practices are not human techniques for “getting closer to God.” They are not little towers of Babel. But they are most necessary servants in our spiritual formation – means for the grace of God to flow into our lives.

One writer, commenting on the importance of spiritual exercises to John Calvin, sums it up this way:

Seeing through Calvin’s eyes, we may describe what ails many Protestant churches today as follows: having inherited a treasury of formative exercises, we practice them only here and there, now and then – and still expect and even claim to be getting in shape. Or, we expect no such thing, instead interpreting the treasury as a collection not of exercises meant to form us, but rather of activities meant to express, demonstrate, or symbolically establish ourselves as believing Christian beliefs, belonging to a Christian crowd – or simply accomplishing some supposedly Christian task (obtaining a divine favor, for example, or meeting with divine approval)… But this is, at bottom, another category mistake. We take a yoga mat and frame it on the wall. We resolve to run a marathon and enroll in a training program of short runs two or three Sunday mornings a month. We dream of mastering the piano but only rarely sit down at one, and even more rarely practice our scales.

If someone objects that a light workout once a week (or less) is hardly enough to produce the transformation our benefactor likely had in mind, we may insist – rather oddly – that what really count are our ideas about the exercises, the machines, the benefactor, and so on.

Wittingly or unwittingly, we live out the idea that, most fundamentally, the Christian church is a social club, an ethical society, a creedal clan – in short, an organization in which participating a few times a month (or even a few times a year) poses no real problem for membership.

The point is – for theologians, for the Biblical writers, and for us – the great truths of the Gospel are not simply to be admired from a distance. Theology is unto the living of life, is unto becoming more fully human, is unto learning how much we are loved so that we can then become loving people.

We are human beings, YES, not human doings, but it often takes some practice for that new way of being to become second nature.

This might seem like a silly question (of course it is!) or merely a matter of semantics, but for the Marrow Men (see last week’s blog) and those familiar with church history, it is not as simple a question as it appears. It touches upon the thorny question – for whom did Christ die?

Thomas Boston and the Marrow Men, desirous to affirm the historic Reformed creeds but more importantly to be faithful to the Word of God, stressed that “there is warrant to offer Christ to all… and a warrant for all to freely receive Christ.” As Boston carefully put it, “Christ is dead for all.” His death is sufficient for all, “whosoever will” believe in Him (John 3:18). Thus, the free offer of the gospel must be made to all people without condition.

The scholar and preacher Sinclair Ferguson argues that Boston’s opponents drew a false conclusion from two true premises:

Premise 1: The grace of God in Christ saves the elect.
Premise 2: The elect are known by the forsaking of sin.
Conclusion: Grace is therefore given to those who forsake sin.

The conclusion may appear logical, but it is false. In the name of orthodoxy, Boston’s opponents preached a conditional offer of the gospel. IF you have sufficiently repented, THEN you may receive grace. Therefore, the gospel is to be offered only to those who show some signs of this grace.

But Boston rightly saw in this position a distortion of the gospel. When we make the offer dependent upon the conditions, we distort and “dis-grace” the gospel. Ferguson adds, “While conviction of our sin is often a means God employs, it is never to be a condition we impose on the free offer of the gospel.”

But is this really relevant today?

Today it often sounds like, “Turn from your sins, put your faith in Christ, and God will love you.” Conditional grace. Which is precisely what the Pharisees of Jesus’ day taught (obey and THEN God will love you) and why Jesus denounces them with unrivalled harshness. By placing conditions on God’s love and grace – in the name of defending His character and honor – the Pharisees were unwittingly defaming His character and honor, turning God into a conditional God.

This has always been the temptation of zealous, religious people – in the name of defending God’s holy character, we make the error of placing conditions on the free grace of God.

One consequence of this distortion of the gospel has been distorting how we speak of and preach about the cross of Christ. We often speak as if by His death Jesus must convince His unwilling Father to love us. But, Ferguson eloquently argues, it is not to persuade the Father into loving us that the Son must die. It is because the Father loves us “that He did not spare His own son but delivered Him up for us all” (Romans 8:32).

It is because God loves needy sinners “while we were yet sinners” (Romans 5:8) that God the Father was willing to inflict His judgment and God the Son was willing to endure it. God inflicts and God endures because God loves humanity. This is our Good News.

God’s grace is free; God’s love is without condition. And here is where Ferguson drives his pastoral point home for listeners today:

Do you know this God of grace?
Do you live in this grace of God yourself?
Do you show this grace to others?

Ferguson concludes his lecture with this searching quote from John Owen:

Unacquaintedness with our mercies and our privileges is our sin as well as our trouble. We hearken not to the voice of the Spirit which is given unto us that we may know the things that are freely bestowed on us of God. This makes us go heavily when we might rejoice. And to be weak where we might be strong in the Lord.

How few of the saints are experimentally acquainted with this privilege of holding immediate communion with the Father in love? With what anxious doubtful thoughts do they look upon Him? What fears, what questionings are there of His goodwill and kindness?

At the best many think there is no sweetness at all in God towards us but what is purchased at the high price of the blood of Jesus. It is true that that alone is the way of communication, but the free fountain and spring of all is in the bosom of the Father.

Reading through Timothy Keller’s latest book Center Church (which by the way is a brilliant synthesis of his collected writings on the marks of a church in the city for the city), I kept coming across allusions to the Marrow controversy. I’d heard of this before and knew it was an important historical debate, and I recalled that Sinclair Ferguson, a fine scholar and even better preacher, had done a series of lectures on the Marrow controversy that you can easily find on the internet. So I listened in, curious why an arcane 18th century debate in the Church of Scotland means so much to Keller and Ferguson, whose teaching means so much to me.

Here’s a bit of the historical background:

In 1717, at William Craig’s examination to enter the ministry, the young pastoral candidate was asked his position on this statement:

“It is not sound and orthodox to teach that we must forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ.”

Oddly phrased to be sure; nevertheless, we might wonder how we would answer that question were it put to us. Further, we might wonder, “What’s the big deal?”

Craig endorsed the statement and was subsequently denied admission into the ministry. The statement was condemned by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and in the wake of the controversy was created a faction known as the Marrow Men, named after a book of theology called The Marrow of Modern Divinity, which dealt with similar questions.

The Marrow Men, a group of 12 led by Thomas Boston, objected to the condemnation of the statement. Boston said that, while it might have been poorly worded, the sentiment remained true. The majority of his peers, however, opposed Boston and the Marrow Men, insisting that the conditions of faith and repentance need to be met before salvation can be accepted. In the name of orthodoxy and Biblical fidelity, they stressed the necessity of forsaking sin before Christ can be received, and they considered the Marrow Men’s view of grace dangerously antinomian (anti-nomos, meaning opposed to the law), leading to license and abuse.

It’s true these are recondite historical details and mentioning them might reinforce the impression many people have of the church today – pastors and leaders infighting over theological minutiae that bear little or no relevance to modern life. But Thomas Boston discerned then that this was no mere theological quibble limited to that time and place, but at stake was nothing less than the gospel itself, how it is preached, and how it is understood. And Ferguson and Keller are keen to convince us that nothing can be more relevant to our lives today than our understanding of the gospel of free grace and our incurable tendency to distort it.

The questions surrounding that historical controversy are still with us today.

Must people forsake their sins in order to come to Christ?

Put another way, “Must we obey God in order to be loved by God?”

The Marrow Men stressed that only union with Christ can give us the power and desire to turn from our sin; only when we know God loves us will we love God. They accused their opponents of separating Christ from His benefits, and the Marrow Men stressed that grace precedes faith and repentance. Therefore, repentance is not a condition of the gospel offer nor is it a condition of salvation. Repentance is never a cause of grace or a condition of grace but always a consequence of grace. It is a necessary consequence – saving faith is a repentant faith – but it remains a consequence, never a condition, of salvation.

Ferguson adds how easy and commonplace it is for us today to perpetuate the error of insisting that people must obey God in order to be loved by God. In so doing, Ferguson says, we confuse the means that God employs (conviction of sin) with a condition we impose.

Ferguson asks ministers to examine their own preaching and what a temptation it is, in the face of “cheap grace” and “easy believism,” to err in the direction of legalism, placing conditions upon the free grace of God.

To be continued next week: Is the Gospel for Everyone?

“i’m nobody, who are you?
are you — nobody — too?”
- Emily Dickinson

You would probably never guess that, during her lifetime, Emily Dickinson really was a “nobody”. Hardly anybody knew her poetry. Hardly anybody knew who she was. She didn’t go to great lengths to get her poetry or her name out. As a result, she lived a profoundly unimpressive life. In fact, if anything, her life was marked by an extreme lack of charisma and severe bouts of depression – and yet when you read her work you realize that her life was also marked by close and intimate friendships that enriched her life and inspired her to cover our high school literature books with her poetry.

Four months ago, I joined Pacific Crossroads Church as the Pastor of Community Groups. I’ve since been asked to write this post for two reasons: (1) introduce myself to those I haven’t yet met, and (2) discuss something that makes community ‘go’. I think Dickinson’s line answers both.

So many of us come to a city like Los Angeles to be ‘somebody’ – and don’t for a second think that temptation is lost on pastors and preachers – and yet our desire to be ‘somebody’ can be the very thing that gets in the way of one thing we all need – real, profound community. ‘Somebodies’ hesitate to let their guard down. ‘Somebodies’ look to compete, rather than connect. ‘Somebodies’ fall into the trap of perpetually worrying about perceptions.

And yet here is Dickinson with this spunky, playful line. “I’m nobody….Are you nobody, too?” What freedom there is in that! Without bitterness or hostility, she simply embraces this view of herself.

For that purpose of freedom, the gospel invites us to the same view of ourselves. In Deuteronomy 7, in the very moment before the Israelites enter the Promised Land, God tells them he’s delivered them from Egypt, not because they were the strongest people, but because they were the weakest. The blessed nation (God’s people!) consisted of just a bunch of ‘nobodies’. And then, in the gospels, what was at the core of Jesus’ teachings? “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 5:3). As Paul put it, even Christ himself “did not count equality…a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing” (Phl. 2:6-7).

So what makes community ‘go’? Putting away the worry about being ‘somebody’ and finding the freedom to view ourselves as simply a bunch of ‘nobodies’, all gathering humbly and yet imperfectly around the one Somebody, like cold people gathering around the fire. It’s in that place where we find community. It’s in that understanding that we find connection. It’s in that home that we find rest. May we all experience the freedom (myself included, as I embark on a new life here) to exhale that first intimidating, and yet satisfying, line – “I’m nobody” – and may that bring us into the place where the ragged people go – community.

When I heard about the upcoming June 1 Open Forum and the quality talent involved, my first thought was, “I’ll be there!” I wish, however, that my first response was, “Who can I invite?” This Open Forum is the kind of event where we can bring friends who aren’t Christians, friends who might not even be willing to come to a church service. And why would we want to do that? Put another way, why is evangelism—sharing with others the hope we’ve found in Christ—important?

Because Jesus is life. And we always recommend what we enjoy. When we find a new restaurant, watch a great film, meet an amazing person, what’s one of the first things we do? Tell others. Whether through a Facebook post or a personal conversation, we are wired to pass the good news on. The sharing of it actually enhances our enjoyment. So why don’t we share our faith more readily?

There are many reasons, but perhaps foremost is that we are afraid—afraid of looking foolish, afraid of being one of “those people,” afraid of not having answers to the questions that might come our way. Which is why I am glad that evangelism isn’t my job alone; it is a group effort. Ultimately, of course, it is the work of the Holy Spirit to draw a person to Christ, but the tools He most often uses are His people—not just as individuals, but as a whole, as a community. And that is why inviting someone into community is one of the most effective ways to begin sharing with them what we enjoy most, Christ Himself.

If someone hadn’t risked looking foolish to talk to me about Christ, I would have never come to faith. The person who spent the most time with me had few answers about Christianity. I would ask him deep, complicated questions and his response was frequently, “I don’t know.” Then, he would ask me to do something with him. His spending time with me revealed to me the heart of the God that he followed. His God was interested in people like me, and God used that friend to start drawing me to Himself.

Pacific Crossroads offers several opportunities and events that will help you to share the One you enjoy most:

Interest Groups: If you have friends who are resistant to anything spiritual, you can join an Interest Group and invite them to one of the events. Interest Groups are a great way to meet people with the same hobbies, and we have Interest Groups for everything, including going to museums, Disneyland, surfing, and more. Our hope is that these are not just groups where Christians hang out with other Christians, but instead are places where we can bring our non-believing friends into vital relationships with Christians. Learn more about Interest Groups and sign up here.

Open Forums: These events will be sensitive to seekers and will explore an important or entertaining topic while bringing in a Christian point of view. Mark your calendar for our next Open Forum on Saturday, June 1, and please invite friends who do not go to church! This Open Forum features a staged reading of the Broadway play “I Never Sang for My Father,” followed by a discussion with the cast about the impact of father/child relationships, an audience Q&A, and a reception. Tony Hale, Orson Bean, Alley Mills, Wynn Everett, and Arnold Chun will star in this production. RSVP here.

Share Your Faith Workshops: Nearly every month we will have a workshop to equip you to share your faith personally. There are three main workshops: “Their Story,” “Your Story,” and “God’s Story.” You can go to any of them in any order. The next one, “Their Story,” will be on June 30. It will focus on understanding where people are in their faith journeys and how best to listen and communicate with them.

Invite Someone to a Worship Service: Did you know that after decades of gathering data on this question—“What is the most common way people come to faith in Christ?”—that the NUMBER ONE CATALYST, by an overwhelming margin, was, “Someone invited me to go to church with them”? The claims of Jesus become credible over time by observing them being lived out by others and by being welcomed by others BEFORE you believe.

We have more initiatives in the works, including a new kind of study group for seekers as well as outreaches for people working Downtown. This focus is a new chapter in our community, and I would appreciate you joining me in asking God to make us more like Jesus, having more compassion for those who do not yet know Him and greater boldness in reaching out to those around us.

Every week I get to serve with an incredible group of people called the Pacific Crossroads worship team. These people include instrumentalists, tech crew, vocalists, sound engineers, pastors, prayer leaders, and more. In the next few months I’d like to introduce you to some of them, starting with Brian Song.

Brian is a bass player in the Crossroads worship band. He is also a Community Group leader, husband, and father. He’s a generous, kind-hearted man with a lot to say about leading a life of worship. A few weeks ago we had a conversation as we waited together to pick up a friend from LAX.

Chris: How long have you been playing at Pacific Crossroads?

Brian: I’ve been coming to the church since 2006 – that’s about seven years – but I started playing before that as a sub. That’s how I found out about the church.

Chris: Ever had any crazy experiences in a worship setting?

Brian: Yes. I was leading worship once at a high school retreat my senior year and we were playing some slow worship song. All of a sudden a fistfight erupted in the service between two high school guys! I didn’t know what to do, so I just kept pretending nothing was happening while these two boys kept hitting each other in the face.

Chris: …Just keep playing, guys…

Brian: …Just keep playing… I think in a worship setting that was the craziest non-godly experience I’ve ever had.

Chris: When I say the word “worship,” what comes to mind?

Brian: I think it’s connecting with God – pretty simple answer, but that’s basically what it is, and not just in music. You know, I think of expression. Maybe it’s a little too risqué, but it’s almost like making love. There’s a lot of giving and receiving. What is worship? It’s actually connecting with a person.

Chris: Yeah that’s interesting – this Sunday I’m going to talk about the Trinity between songs and how each member almost seems to defer to the other or give glory to the other.

Brian: Interesting.

Chris: That’s who God is, and we’re invited in. And I have this desire to be someone who loves like that, but also someone able to receive love without feeling embarrassed.

Brian: I feel like I grew up feeling guilty for enjoying God, in a sense, that it was more about me feeling sacrificial as opposed to also enjoying God. It’s something I’ve been wanting to know how to do more – to enjoy God, just for who He is, and I’m kind of learning how again.

I haven’t been very good at it lately, but it’s something that I think is a very important thing. It sounds like there’s a selfish element to it but it’s really not meant to be. God enjoys it when we enjoy Him, to quote John Piper.

Chris: Do you have a favorite song that we sing at Pacific Crossroads?

Brian: As a bass player I never know the titles – I just know the keys. I’d say my favorite song on the album is “All Will Be Well” by Nate Miller. I love the understated nature of it. When you can praise God in your deepest sorrows there’s something more poignant and vivid about that than any other time – and that understated musical space really speaks to me. I started listening to it a lot when I had heard about Will and Angie Gray, and then another friend’s grandmother had died. Oddly enough, it was the offering music for the Easter service, which made it all the more meaningful to me.

Chris: Do you have a favorite memory or moment from a Crossroads service?

Brian: The funniest (albeit uncomfortable) would be the heckler at our Christmas service – mostly because he praised the band. As soon as he said, “Band, you sound great,” I said, “What, what? Guys he liked us! That’s awesome! Good job, band!” Also, anytime someone speaks from the heart onstage, I’m really moved by that. And recently the Genesis series has been one of my favorites. I’ve been listening to the sermons again during the week, which isn’t something I used to do that much.

Chris: What stands out to you about our church community?

Brian: It’s a very little thing, but I’ve never heard anyone in the pulpit badmouth a character in the Bible, no matter how foolish they were. And I think there’s an intrinsic awareness that we are no better, and that spirit captures most things that we do. I feel like I can be honest here with our community, and the fact that members have shared very vulnerable testimonies attests to that.

Chris: How would you like to see our community grow?

Brian: Well, the first thing that comes to mind is more of a culture of evangelism and really reaching people – serving them, but also reaching them with the good news of the gospel, just being more clear about that. One thing I like about our church is that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to bring anyone. There’s definitely a strong awareness of the audience and that it’s not all Christians on Sundays, which I think is great.

Also, so much of our identities are still wrapped up in our careers. What I would love to see in my own life is that when people ask, “What do you do?” I could say I’m a minister or a missionary. We can think more of our identities above all as adopted children of God with a mission – the careers being a means and not the end.

Also, to develop more of a culture of prayer. After-service prayer is one of the best things that I’ve ever done, and I’d love to see more of us ministering to each other in that way.

You can look forward to meeting more of the worship team in the coming months.

When we think of worship on a Sunday morning or evening, we usually think of singing or receiving a teaching. The part of worship that we don’t think of as worship is volunteering. When we think of serving on a Sunday morning or evening – as an usher or a greeter or as part of the parking team – we may think we are sacrificing our time of worship, and this is often unappealing.

Missing the sermon to sit at a parking validation table – when not very many people are walking by – does this really have anything to do with loving God?

I’d argue that it has everything to do with loving God. If people in our community are not giving of themselves in service, they are being robbed of a big part of the gospel story. We come to a worship service but miss out on worship.

Worshipping God involves re-orienting our entire being toward God – mind, will, and emotions. Worship challenges us to look beyond ourselves, to die to those areas in our lives that are the most self-serving. So serving on Sundays is not the only part of the worship service that involves sacrifice – all worship is sacrifice! Worship is acknowledging that I am not the center of the universe, sacrificing my ego.

Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York says, “Worship is treasuring God: I ponder His worth and then do something about it – I give Him what He’s worth.”

I used to be a horrible reader. I paid attention only to the parts of the story that most compelled me, and I gave the rest of the text a cursory nod. A teacher helped me change that. She advised that, when I encounter a new story, the best way to unlock the world is by locating a statement that I initially resist, and I enter the story at this point. I take the statement I’m most tempted to bypass and press into it with my whole heart, by way of my imagination, by way of my action. And then start to look at the rest of the story in light of it.

If the gospel is the story that I want to re-shape my entire life, I must not disregard parts of it simply because they are not appealing to my present emotional state. The less I see worship as something that gratifies me, the more I expose my affections to the complete person of Christ – through praying, singing, hearing God’s word, and serving. The more that all of these parts of worship are intact, the more vibrant all of them become, the more the narrative of Jesus will take hold of my imagination.

Is service a foreign statement in the gospel story for you? Consider it a way for you to journey deeper into the story of God.

We want you to experience the honor and joy of being a part of Christ’s family at Pacific Crossroads – wherever you are in your journey. We want you to experience worship in all of its forms, including sacrificing your time to greet visitors.

Since I’m the Sunday Service Volunteer Coordinator, that’s the area of service that I’m focusing on, BUT, just as worship is not confined to Sundays, service is not confined to Sundays or even with Pacific Crossroads. If you’re already giving of yourself for others in some way, like bringing meals to your neighbors, then great!

But if you find that you’re not intentionally serving, joining a Sunday service team is a good place to start. If you’re not sure where to serve, try a few things out. Ask questions. Start the conversation: “I want to serve – what does this look like for me?” Ask a friend, “How can we set apart the time we consider to be our own and intentionally extend the hospitality of Christ to our neighbors?” Email me (Alex@pacificcrossroads.org), or find me after the service (this is what I look like). I’m here to help you serve, and there are as many ways to serve as God is creative.

For those who are already serving on Sundays, my hope is that you are not serving out of guilt or obligation, but that you consider your volunteer duties as nothing less than worship – just as full of weight and beauty as taking your seat and listening to the word of God from the stage. How and when we are filled by the Spirit can surprise us. It can happen while teaching in the Children’s Ministry, or even while sitting at the parking validation table.

A great way to learn more about serving on Sundays is to attend First Serve, which occurs the third Sunday of every month. Over a light breakfast, we provide an overview of service opportunities and then give you a chance to shadow a current volunteer to experience serving first-hand. The next First Serve is on May 19. Learn more here.

Update from Will & Angie Gray’s Blog: “Will, Meet Will” – Yesterday, Morgen Wilbourne, Pastor Rankin’s wife, posted this on Will & Angie’s blog. We have been praying for Will & Angie as a community, and we encourage you to pray for them and keep updated through their website, goteamgray.com.

There’s an iconic scene in Steve Martin’s film L.A. Story where he gets in his car to drive next door. Driving is quintessential L.A. So is arriving late. Even our term “fashionably late” reinforces the idea that arriving on time would be gauche. Lateness is part of our culture, and over the years it has become an increasing problem at Pacific Crossroads.

I haven’t talked about this much because I don’t want to reinforce one of the major confusions about Christianity in our city – that being a Christian means trying to be good, that Christianity is about rule-keeping and morality. But “try harder to do better” is not our good news! The good news is not about something we do, but something that has been done for us. In Christ, God has revealed His character, His desire to rescue humanity from our sins. The Gospel is not good advice to be followed; it is good news to be announced.

So, in an effort to distinguish true Biblical Christianity from its moralistic impersonator, we have shied away from saying things like, “You should come to church on time.” Besides, shame is a poor motivator and never effective long-term. Most importantly, to someone who is NOT a Christian or is having a particularly hard season of believing God loves them, we want you to hear that we’re thrilled that you came, even if you stumbled in halfway through or after the worship service ended. I never want to shame someone who had to summon an enormous amount of courage even to sneak in the back late.

But for the sake of serving some, I’m afraid I have ignored what has become a real spiritual problem affecting professing Christians in our community. This rampant arriving late reflects a lack of understanding and care about worship. It dishonors God because it suggests that we think worship is primarily about us, our time, our preferences. It sends a confusing message to non-Christians, many who arrive on time, rightly assuming, “Isn’t this what you do if you are a true worshipper?”

As a pastor, I fear my not speaking out about this has tacitly endorsed the message, “It’s ok, everybody does it,” and has formed our community in some unhealthy and counter-productive ways. It doesn’t matter how persuasive the sermon might be in calling us to “lay down our lives for Jesus” if other aspects of our church environment are communicating “you are here as consumers to be served.”

If you believe, as I do, that one of the besetting sins of our cultural moment is our individualism, setting our individual preferences and personal freedom as the highest good, then countenancing this habit of “come whenever you’d like” may be incredibly unloving toward Christians at Pacific Crossroads. We are allowing our minds to be “conformed to the patterns of this world” (Romans 12:2). Think how the aptly named iPhone reinforces our incessant individualism. We are glued to our iPhones, which condition us to view the world as available to us and at our disposal. The world, what we want to make of it, is at hand, to be shaped to our wishes. How could we not unconsciously begin to expect that we are the center of our own environments? That our time is our own? That we are the center of it all?

This is the heart of our fallen condition, our self-centeredness, and precisely what worship aims to heal and rectify. Worship serves to de-center our selves, to remind us that God is the center, that Jesus is the center of it all. Worship is NOT primarily about us – our tastes, our desires, our preferences. Worship is primarily about God, who is jealous for His glory. He says, “My glory is My own and I will not share it” (Isaiah 42:8), and when we arrive to worship on our own time we insult Jesus, the object and subject of our worship and our true Worship Leader (Hebrews 8:2).

I’m not sure where to start to begin to heal this tendency, but I thought I might start by writing this out. We want a Gospel solution, and by that I mean we want love and gratitude, not shame or fear, to compel change. We can be motivated by the love of God, gratitude for what God has done for us in Christ, and awareness by His Spirit that God is for us. “How can I dishonor you, Lord, after all You have done for me?”

No doubt, I need to provide better teaching about the centrality of God in worship and the purpose of worship. Lost in all the debates about “Who is Church for: Christians or non-Christians?” is the unassailable fact that worship is not primarily about us. Worship is about God.

Our actions reflect our functional values. We would almost never be late for a screening of a favorite film because we don’t want to miss a moment of what we value. Perhaps our tendency to arrive late for worship reflects a functional belief that God is not the organizing center around which all our other priorities are centered. Beliefs shape practices. But it is also true that practices shape beliefs, such that one way to begin to prioritize God is to prioritize God. Habits shape us. Intentionality forms us.

Granted, you could reply, “Showing up on time is a culturally-relative expectation. In many areas of the world, no one would think anything of showing up a half-hour late.” True, but we don’t live in one of those places. We do live in a culture where being on time reflects care and consideration of the other.

I used to have a chronic problem of showing up late for appointments, even personal engagements. Sometimes I still do. But I remember now what my grandfather told me once when I kept him waiting ten minutes. “Rankin, you are always on time. Your time.”

More than a blog is needed to change a culture, but let this be a start, a cry from the heart of a concerned pastor.

Over the past ten years I’ve lived in Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, and now California. Always in transition, as if I’ve been living in tents like Abraham wandering through the desert. Never in a place long enough for it to feel like home, and once it did, it was on to the next.

I moved to Los Angeles to study Interior Design, thinking, “I’ll live in LA two years for school, and if I don’t have a job when I’m finished, or if I’m miserable, I can move back to the land of sweet tea and boiled peanuts.” At the same time, I was tired of living in tents. I wanted to build a home in Los Angeles, even if it was just for a season.

Part of building a home was deciding to become a member of a church community. When I started attending Pacific Crossroads, I was curious about what it meant to be a member of this particular church. On Sundays I couldn’t necessarily tell who was a member and who wasn’t. Lots of people volunteered and ate donuts; some were members; some were not.

Then one day I was having coffee with a new friend who’s a member of Pacific Crossroads. She told me that, because some of her friends are members, she holds them to a higher standard. She expects her friends who are members to not only show up at Sunday services and Community Group, but also to show up in everyday life as a person who has been and is being transformed by Christ.

Over scones and caffeine I realized the difference between members and non-members. The difference is not the level of commitment, because I see both members and non-members as very involved and committed. The difference is that members have made their commitment public to the community.

I see membership as declaring that I am a follower of Christ and want a more Gospel-centered life. Once I have declared this, my friends that are members have a responsibility to help encourage and push me in that direction. This is not done from a heart of legalism but from a heart of genuine care that I experience the fullness of Christ. I have given the members and leaders of Pacific Crossroads permission to remind me of this. That can be painful at times. Sometimes I want to hide from it. But in the end I have seen it lead to a fuller life with Christ.

This goes both ways. Not only do I have people taking care of me, but I also feel responsible for others. I am expected to point others toward a more Gospel-centered life.

This isn’t to say that I think non-members aren’t serious about their relationship with Christ. But by making their commitment public, members have opened themselves up to the kind of encouragement and pushing that I’m talking about. If a friend ever tells me I have my priorities out of order, and I get upset, my friend could respond, “This is what you asked for when you became a member.”

I have been on a swim team most of my life and still am today. I love swimming and know that going to practice will make me better, but I don’t always trust myself to go to an exhausting practice after a long day at work. But I know there is a team at the pool waiting for me, and they’re counting on me to come to practice to become a better swimmer and help them get better too.

Similarly, church membership isn’t about me, and it isn’t about Pacific Crossroads, either. While it does have a transforming impact on me, it is ultimately about the Kingdom of God. It’s about the mission that Christ has given all of us to love Him and show His love to others. As a member of a church, I gave the church the permission to remind me of this mission and allowed them to join me in it.

I have lived in Los Angeles almost two years now and I have no intention of leaving. I’m glad I don’t live in a tent anymore. Instead I live in a community of people who point me toward a deeper life with Christ.

This Saturday, April 27, join us for Membership at Pacific Crossroads to learn more about our history and beliefs and what it means to be a member of this community. Learn more and RSVP here.

Pride plays a greater part than goodness in the objections we make to those who commit mistakes; and we admonish them not so much to correct them as to convince them that we are exempt from these mistakes. – La Rochefoucauld, Maxims

The day after Tiger Woods’ return to the “world number one” ranking in golf last month, Nike released this ad:

But of course winning doesn’t take care of everything. I’m writing this from the neonatal intensive care unit of the UCLA hospital, and the emptiness, the foolishness of that statement is glaring. (Editor’s note: this blog was written two weeks ago. Rankin’s newborn son Will was subsequently released from the hospital and is home and healthy.)

Nike claimed it was only a reference to an oft-repeated sentiment Woods had made earlier in his career and pertained only to his performance on the golf course – that no double entendre to his past marriage woes was intended.

We have a word for that, but I’ll use the one the writer Dorothy Sayers preferred: “Balderdash.”

You don’t have to have seen one episode of Mad Men to know that advertising agencies are especially keen to detect any possible innuendo in any suggested marketing campaign. The client’s business depends upon vetting all possible scenarios of how an ad could be “read.” Nike knew exactly what they were doing and, in the spirit of unbridled capitalism, perhaps deserves some recognition. Everyone is talking about this ad, which is exactly the risk they weighed in deciding to run it.

And if you don’t think Tiger Woods had the final say over whether this ad ran or not, then you haven’t been following him very long. For a particularly scathing and brave assessment of Woods’ lack of contrition, check out Rick Reilly’s article on ESPN (read it here). Woods gave the “ok” and he knew the likely reaction. Reilly’s article ends, “Can you imagine how little he thinks of us?”

Now you could be charitable and just say that Woods is being vain and foolish. As we all can be and have been. And are. “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” And it is good to be reminded by Jesus that none of us has any stones of condemnation to throw, that we are just as dependent upon the grace of God as anyone. And no doubt La Rochefoucauld’s maxim should be stapled above any court of judgment, perhaps especially the church’s. We are most prone to overlook our pride and call it virtue or a concern with goodness.

Still, how sad and how foolish for Nike and for Tiger Woods.

Tiger is probably the greatest golfer ever – phenomenally talented, determined, ambitious, with an almost unrivalled work ethic and will to win. No doubt his friends could add many other admirable traits. He’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars. By most people’s standards, he is a winner. He’s number one in the world in his profession. The best.

But think of all that he is missing. Think of what his success has kept him from. Think of all that he has lost because of all that he has won.

In an effort not to appear judgmental when that has become the culturally unforgivable sin, not wanting to appear reactionary, we Christians have lost our spine, if not our own personal convictions, when it comes to what truly makes a successful life. We certainly don’t have any higher ground to stand on than Tiger or anyone else. But God help us when we can’t sometimes say that even the most affluent and successful among us are fools and that often we are too.