Armor-bearers.

Armor-bearer [ÄR·mər BER·ər, noun, adj.] A pastor’s intern.

Years ago we had a guest speaker at our church, and I (serving as my pastor’s assistant) was asked to coordinate with the speaker’s assistant. He introduced himself: “Hi, I’m Donny. I’m his armor-bearer.”

“Okay,” I said, figuring this was a new Christianese title for pastor’s assistants. (One which I didn’t care to use myself. Unfamiliar titles confuse people. “Assistant” doesn’t.) Donny made sure I got his boss’s PowerPoint slides, and that was that… till it came time for his boss to speak, when he began by saying, “First, I’d like my armor-bearer to say a few words,” and Donny was given the microphone for about five minutes to give a mini-sermon.

Well, guest speakers’ assistants don’t usually get to preach—unless they’re expected to introduce their boss, and take advantage of the opportunity, and preach a little something. So I asked a few questions. Turns out Donny was an intern—he wanted to learn to lead a church, so his boss was showing him how to do a little of everything—and someone decided “armor-bearer” was a more Christian-sounding title. Donny liked it, so that’s what he was.

Since that time, I’ve met many more “armor-bearers” and found that in the church, just as in the business world, there are a lot of folks who take advantage of their interns.

Penance.

Penance [PE·nəns, noun] Confession of one’s sins to God (often with the aid of a fellow Christian) so as to gain God’s forgiveness and encouragement to do better.

That’s the proper Christian definition. The dictionary lists another definition first: “Voluntary self-punishment, done to show regret for wrongdoing.”

The reason self-punishment is the first definition in the dictionary, is ’cause that’s what most people do when we feel penitent—when we feel sorry, regretful, and repentant. We don’t bother to ask God (or others) for forgiveness: We go straight to punishing ourselves.

Many times we punish ourselves emotionally: We feel terrible, and make ourselves continue to feel terrible, about our misdeeds. We worry, we stress, we mourn, we beat ourselves down. But very often, we also punish ourselves physically: We deprive ourselves of the things we enjoy, like favorite activities or favorite foods. And many people will even go so far as to physically harm themselves.

Christians do this too. Historically, we’ve invented all sorts of ways to hurt ourselves.

Jesus and the greatest in the Kingdom.

Jesus and his students came to Kfar Nahum, and once they were in the house he grilled them: “What were you debating on the road?” They kept quiet: On the road, they were debating with one another about which of them was greatest.

Jesus sat down to teach, called the Twelve, and told them, “If anyone wants to be in first place, they’ll instead be last of all, and minister to all.”

—Mark 9.33-35 KWL

This story is typically used to show Christians how to become the greatest in the Kingdom: You gotta become the lowest. You gotta strive for last place. You gotta serve everybody. So if you’re ambitious, and you want to get a nice high position in the Kingdom, start serving others. Start low on the totem pole.

But that’s not what Jesus was trying to teach. That’s what we wish he taught: We want to be great in the Kingdom, and want the secret to that greatness. And if we apply ourselves, and work really hard, and minister to others to the best of our ability, we’ll earn that greatness. We’ll achieve that greatness.

But the Kingdom of God doesn’t run on merit. It runs on grace.

The fear of false peace.

As I said previously, Christians aren’t necessarily known for being peaceful. Some of that is because we lack peace. And some of that is because we fear peace—because we don’t believe it when we see it.

You see, one of the more popular End Times theories is that the Beast (Rv 13) is gonna take over the world by pretending to be a peacemaker. Where do they get this idea from? Well, not the bible. Mostly it comes from the idea the Beast (whom they often call “the Antichrist”) is gonna be Bizarro Jesus: Anything Jesus does, the Beast is gonna do the opposite—but pretend to do the same, so as to make itself look like the Christ. While Jesus really is the Prince of Peace, the Beast will be a fake peacemaker—but look like a real peacemaker. So whenever you see someone who’s really well-known for encouraging and spreading peace, watch out! It’s probably the Beast.

As a result, we have a lot of Christians who are wary of peace… instead of practicing peace. And in so doing, they’re acting like antichrists, just like the Beast they fear so much.

Sin.

Sin [sin, noun, adj.] A violation of God’s known will.
[verb] An act which achieves sin.

Properly defined, sin is when we know what God wants of us—we know the right thing to do—yet we ignore it and selfishly do our own thing. (Jm 4.17, 1Jn 3.4) So at its core, sin is based on selfishness. If we weren’t so insistent on doing our own thing, and cared more about doing what God wants, we’d be far less likely to sin.

Sin is far more than just a flaw in our character. Humans are selfish. Self-preservation is hard-wired into our brains and bodies—after all, whenever we do something which doesn’t preserve ourselves, we hurt ourselves—but we take that to a level God didn’t intend. We don’t just preserve our lives and well-being; we preserve the things which we believe comfort us, entertain us, please us, or suit us. If God’s will goes against any of those things, we’re often quite willing to ignore him. We figure he’ll forgive us. Or we just don’t care.

The path of least resistance. (Why we don’t go to church, #1.)

As you’ve guessed by the title, this is the first in a series of articles on why many Christians don’t go to church. Even though we should, even though we know we should, we just don’t. Why is that?

Many folks have put together a list of reasons. I’ve read a bunch of these lists. Sometimes it’s their own personal reasons why they won’t go to church. Sometimes it’s why they think people won’t go to church: They don’t personally know, because they themselves do go, but they could imagine why they might not. And topping just about every single list is Christians behaving badly: We get burned by fellow Christians who behave in less-than-Christlike ways, so we leave.

While that’s certainly a valid reason, may I suggest the usual reason, the most common reason why Christians don’t go to church, has nothing to do with misbehaving Christians.

Sharing one’s heart.

This post is part of a synchroblog, a bunch of different Christian bloggers reacting to a common topic. Wanna get in on it? Visit the synchroblog blog.

This month the synchrobloggers are discussing “ordinary courage,” a concept described by Brené Brown in this way.

Courage originally meant “to speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.” Over time, this definition has changed, and, today, courage is more synonymous with being heroic. Heroics are important and we certainly need heroes, but I think we’ve lost touch with the idea that speaking honestly and openly about who we are, about what we’re feeling, and about our experiences (good and bad) is the definition of courage. Heroics are often about putting our life on the line. Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line.

—Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection, pp. 12-13

I’ve heard people describe this sort of thing using the Christianese term “share one’s heart,” as in “I’d like to share my heart on this subject.”

The “I suck at prayer” prayer.

In his book Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, Richard Foster began with the most basic, elementary form of prayer he could think of, which he calls Simple Prayer. But I believe there’s a form even more elementary: The nervous, stumbling, hesitating, “God, I know I never talk to you…” or “God, I’m not a praying person…” or “God, I haven’t done this before…” It’s when the person who doesn’t pray, realizes they need to pray, and humbly gives it a shot. It’s what I call the “I suck at prayer” prayer.

Christians might pray rather often, yet still pray the “I suck at prayer” prayer. It’s because for a lot of us, others lead our prayers. We pray in church… along with the pastor, who’s doing all the talking. Or we might regularly say grace before meals, but some of us aren’t really praying so much as going through the motions of acknowledging God. Or nearly all of our prayers are rote prayers like the Lord’s Prayer, and we never do talk to God without a script.

So when it comes to extemporaneous prayer—praying without a script, talking to God just like we’d talk to anyone—some of us feel incapable of it.

Jesus reminds his students of his coming death.

In the previous chapter, Jesus taught his students he was gonna die. It was the first time he’d brought it up, and it freaked Simon Peter so bad he actually started to rebuke Jesus for saying so, and Jesus had to rebuke Peter right back. I quote:

Jesus began to teach his students that the Son of Man had to suffer greatly; had to be rejected by the elders, head priests, and scribes; had to be executed; and after three days, had to be resurrected. Jesus bluntly gave this lesson.

—Mark 8.31-32 KWL

Well, now we’re at the point in Mark, right after Jesus freed a demonized boy, where he brought up the subject for the second time.

Shalóm and distractions.

The Hebrew word for peace is shalóm. Jews nowadays use it as a greeting. It means peace, but more specifically it means to have enough: To lack nothing. To be free from worry. To not waste our time thinking about what we could have, but be content with what we do have. Just as Jesus taught.

That’s why I tell you all: Don’t worry your minds over what you’ll eat or drink, or your body over what you’ll wear. Aren’t the mind and body meant for better things than food and clothes? Take a good look at the wild birds, which neither sow nor harvest nor bundle crops into barns: Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you better than they are? Who among you, from pure worry, can add half a meter to their length? Look closely, you who worry about clothing, at the wild lily, at how it grows, doesn’t tire, and doesn’t spin thread—I tell you not even Solomon, in all the finery he wore, was like one of them. If God dresses grass like this—today growing in the field, tomorrow tossed in the oven—isn’t far more coming to you tiny-faithed people? So don’t worry!—saying “What’ll we eat?” or “What’ll we drink?” or “What’ll we wear?” Pagans chase these things. Your heavenly Father has already known you all need all these things. First pursue God’s Kingdom and its justice, and you’ll all receive all these things. So don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself, and today has enough evil as it is.

—Jesus, Matthew 6.25-34 KWL

When we lack shalóm/“peace,” we worry. And Jesus wants us to have peace.