Page 2267 – Christianity Today (2024)

I have been thinking a lot lately about Colossians 1, where Paul writes: “We proclaim Christ, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this reason I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.” It strikes me that this comes close to a creedal text for those of us involved in church ministry. Sometimes we get so immersed in the X’s and O’s of church work that we forget to step back and ask what ‘s the real reason we’re doing all this. Paul has great clarity on it, and is more concise than usual: “so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.”

If your church is looking for a big hairy audacious goal, this will do for starters.

The scale: everyone.

The outcome: mature in Christ.

That’s not common language in our day. So recently I have asked church leaders in a number of settings to take a few moments to describe what someone who is “mature in Christ” looks like. Certain words always make the list: loving, joyful, peaceful, forgiving, serving, courageous, loyal, humble, generous.

And when “mature in Christ” is explained in those terms, there are not many people who are uninterested. This offer has remarkably broad appeal. I went with a friend to see Avatar last week. The 3-D thing is pretty cool. The writer does not actually attach a denominational label to the script, but it was pretty obviously not produced by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. However, the qualities in the heroes are remarkably consistent with many of the words listed by church leaders: courageous, loving, giving, loyal, generous. What it means to be a good person has been embedded by God pretty deeply into human consciousness.

How we get there is another matter.

Then I’ll ask this question: do you think the average unchurched person in America thinks of these characteristics when they hear the word “Christian”? Not so much.

Here’s another question (you can try this one at home, or with your elders if you’re feeling perky): on a scale of 1-100, how is your church doing at producing this kind of person? It’s a funny thing how often we’re aware of our attendance trends or how close to budget we’re running, but we often have not worked much to assess the real target we’re aiming at.

Sometimes we’re not even clear that this is the goal. I was talking to a church leader from a European country recently, who commented on a difficult dynamic where he lives. It is expected that the state will pretty much care for all human needs—the alleviation of poverty, provision of care for the sick, needy, and elderly, and so on. There is little or no expectation that the church will be involved in such issues.

The result, of course, is that most people in that society do not believe that those in churches care about them, or are marked by compassion. In the Acts church, it was almost exactly the other way around; it was the compassion of the church that reached the world.

For only the church has the goal of presenting everyone “mature in Christ.” Other entities can try to lessen suffering or care for needs, but these do not have the same power.

I heard a great talk not long ago by Harvard professor Michael Porter about “doing well at doing good.” He had been part of a project bringing renewal to Newark, New Jersey. They did this, not by trying to meet needs through charity, but by identifying competitive advantages that could attract businesses and create a sustainable financial strategy. The advantage they discovered was that, because of population density, Newark actually had higher purchasing power per square acre than Beverly Hills.

And much good has been done. But it did raise the question in my mind: Is it a good goal to seek to replicate Beverly Hills all over the world? Shouldn’t we aim a bit higher?

Which is part of the reason why the church must be in the compassion business. True compassion is about more than just alleviating suffering. Its final aim is a redeemed humanity and a flourishing earth—”to present everyone mature in Christ.”

This was the work of Jesus himself: to heal the sick, feed the hungry, give sight to the blind, care for the poor; give righteousness to the scandalous and scandalize the self-righteous; give hope to the hopeless and love to the loveless.

And he’s not done yet.

John Ortberg is editor at large of Leadership and pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Menlo Park, California.

Copyright © 2010 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

It might not really be a list of the pope’s favorite rock albums of all time, but the official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, has compiled its Top 10, which includes The Beatles’ Revolver at No. 1 and Carlos Santana’s Supernatural at No. 10.

The complete list:

1. Revolver by the Beatles

2. If I Could Only Remember My Name by David Crosby

3. The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd

4. Rumours by Fleetwood Mac

5. The Nightfly by Donald fa*gen

6. Thriller by Michael Jackson

7. Graceland by Paul Simon

8. Achtung Baby by U2

9. (What’s the Story) Morning Glory by Oasis

10. Supernatural by Carlos Santana

The fatal crash of Nodar Kumaritashvili, a 21-year-old from Georgia, weighed heavily on the opening ceremonies, and chaplains made themselves available to athletes. In a small office in the Olympic Village, Paul Kobylarz leads this year’s Christian chaplaincy program, his fifth Olympics to serve as a chaplain.

“There’s been a lot of confidence displayed toward us being there as a support to handle the questions that come along with a situation like this—the purpose of life and questions about our mortality,” Kobylarz told Christianity Today on Saturday. “We are here to try to answer those questions for the athletes and delegations and to give support in those areas.”

Like many of the chaplains, Kobylarz speaks to athletes from personal experience, having spent three years in Sweden playing professional hockey and 20 years working in sports ministry. Working with athletes at the Olympics is different from other kinds of sports ministry, such as acting as a team chaplain for a professional team, said Kobylarz, who recently became the minister of sports outreach at Traders Point Christian Church in Indianapolis.

“If you are an NFL or NHL team chaplain, you are working with one sport and one coach,” Kobylarz said. “Here at the Olympics, you are meeting someone new each time. People drop in from all over the world, and you don’t know anything about them or their background, maybe very little about their culture.”

Kobylarz was responsible for recruiting Protestant chaplains, so he looked for bilingual chaplains who are in full-time ministry, usually in sports ministry. The Olympic chaplains lead devotions, Bible studies, and worship services from morning to evening as part of the multi-faith chaplaincy programs that share an office in the Olympic Village. Chaplains are not allowed to proselytize while outside of the office, but if an athlete comes to the office, the chaplains can openly talk about Christianity.

“This might be the first time they’ve ever been to a Christian service of any kind, and you don’t know what their preconceived ideas might be of God or Jesus,” said Kobylarz, who also said he knows of a handful of athletes who have become Christians at the Olympics in which he has served.

The Detroit native’s own Olympic dreams were short-circuited even before he took the ice as an 18-year-old hockey player at the Olympic team tryouts in the summer of 1982.

“I feel I have something to offer, as my life was once performance-based,” Kobylarz said. “I had lost my motivation to play, and when I found the Lord, I found a new purpose, a new joy, a new balance.”

After a successful freshman season at the University of Michigan, the high-scoring right wing was invited to the National Sports Festival, where the Olympic team is chosen. What should have been a highlight of his athletic career became the most difficult time of his life.

“USA Today had a list of the players who were going to try out. They had big names—guys like Chris Chelios and other future superstars of the NHL,” said Kobylarz, who is still athletic and fit at age 46. “I started comparing myself to them. The more I read about the tryouts, the larger all the other players became in my eyes, and the smaller I became in my own eyes.”

Kobylarz also experienced burnout from nonstop training, his parents’ marriage was unraveling, and he was fighting a not-yet-diagnosed case of mononucleosis. He was not surprised when he did not make the Olympic team after his freshman year of college, but he was deeply disappointed that he did not play up to his ability.

“I struggled with my motivation that year, and I realized that my identity was completely based on my performance as an athlete,” Kobylarz said. “I couldn’t understand why, because hockey had been everything to me up to that point.”

Two friends who were also athletes at the university invited him to a Bible study sponsored by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Kobylarz did not want to be preached to, but he went because other athletes—people he looked up to—attended.

“When I opened the Bible and really read it for the very first time, I realized that Christ was the puzzle piece missing in my life,” Kobylarz said. “When I started performing first and foremost for God, the pressure that I felt from other people close to me, from the talent scouts, from my college coaches, and the pressure I put on myself disintegrated.”

During his senior year, Kobylarz was scouted by the NHL, signed a contract with the New Jersey Devils after graduation, and played on the farm team for two seasons. Later, he was invited to travel to Europe for three weeks as a member of a Christian hockey team, and was recruited by a coach to play professional hockey in Sweden.

Kobylarz said the church and sports seemed traditionally at odds, since members of the church often opposed the violence in athletics and playing games on Sunday.

“The church in Sweden forced people to choose between church and sports,” Kobylarz said. “If you chose church, you had to give up your sport. That was the history of the church up to that point.”

Kobylarz eventually founded the country’s first national church-based sports ministry, called Sport for Life. The program serves 2,000 to 3,000 athletes every year, teaching the Christian faith while offering athletic training.

As Sport for Life’s reputation grew in Sweden, Kobylarz was asked to serve as a chaplain at major sporting events like the Hockey World Championships, World Cup events, University Games, and the Olympics.

Churches in the host city and the International Sports Coalition, a sports ministry network, develop the Olympics’ Christian chaplaincy program, which shares an office with programs representing other faiths. Kobylarz, who is the winter sports representative for the International Sports Coalition, is serving as a lead chaplain in Vancouver, along with David Wells, general superintendent of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada and the local representative who is handling logistics. In Vancouver, Kobylarz is overseeing 22 other Protestant chaplains, including a former World Cup snowboarder, a former Olympic cross country skier, the former coach for a national cross country team, a former Olympic wrestler, and another former NHL player.

While the Olympics often take place in countries where a religion other than Christianity is dominant, Kobylarz said the location does not affect the chaplaincy program. The host country might make it more difficult to get a chaplaincy program approved in the first place, but once the program is approved and the games are underway, the program is basically the same.

“You’re always going to have athletes from all countries and all religions,” Kobylarz said. “You have to learn to be prepared for questions before you receive them, and you have to be able to take their different backgrounds and cultures, and even their different sports, into consideration.”

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Previous articles on the Olympics include:

Revisiting the Pagan Olympic Games | New scholarship on the ancient Olympics reminds Christians why Emperor Theodosius outlawed the event so many centuries ago. (Christian History, August 8, 2008)

Heavy Medal | At the Olympics, if you don’t medal, you certainly must be a loser. (February 23, 2006)

Opening Ceremony Blues | The Olympics is symbolic, but not of world peace. (February 16, 2006)

Amy Julia Becker responded to recent debates over some preliminary research showing that drug therapy might improve cognitive function in people with Down syndrome. Several high-profile bloggers wrote about this research from the angle of whether Down syndrome should be cured, if it could be. The question led to long comment threads discussing the intersection between disability and identity. By curing Down syndrome, would you be altering the person with Down syndrome to such an extent that you would be tampering with their identity?

Becker’s response—besides pointing out the obvious jump-the-gun factor that the research cited was on mice, not humans, and that it is potentially a treatment and not a cure—was subtitled “Why we shouldn’t be too quick to think disabilities need correcting.” In discussing her daughter’s Down syndrome, Becker brought up the frequently cited Christian narrative whereby disease, illness, and disability result from the Fall and the fallen nature of the world we live in. She objects to this narrative for her daughter, saying, “Our daughter is fallen, yes, but she is no more fallen than I am. She is no more or less broken, no more or less beloved.”

As someone who embraces the fallen-world narrative in explaining my own genetic disorder, I was caught up short by Becker’s dismissal of that narrative as explanation for illness and disability. When she used the term “broken,” of course, she was referring to spiritual brokenness. But as someone with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), also known as brittle bone disease, I can’t help hearing it literally as well. I am more broken than other people. My body does not function as it should. Bones support our bodies’ most essential functions. The reason that babies with the most severe type of OI die soon after birth is that their rib cages cannot support respiration. Bones are designed to break only under extreme stress—a skiing accident, a fall from a tree, a car crash. When I was about four, I sat down on the bathroom floor to talk to my grandmother as she was brushing her hair, and my femur (thigh bone) broke. This is not how it is supposed to be. My body and my bones are deficient. And I wish they weren’t, even though I understand that my bones and my identity are so intertwined in ways good and bad that “me” without OI would be a very different “me.”

I embrace the fallen-world explanation for my bone disorder because I cannot embrace the other two explanations. One option is that my bone disorder, and the pain and suffering that come with it, are God’s will, something God either orchestrated or allowed to serve a greater purpose. This is a popular interpretation among Christians, leading to such clichés as “God will not give you more than you can handle” (which I believe is a distortion of 1 Corinthians 10:13, which says God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear) or “Everything happens for a reason.” Some Christians compare God to human parents who make their children do things the children perceive as suffering—eat their vegetables, bring home good report cards before getting a driver’s license, miss a friend’s birthday party as punishment for bad behavior. But parents who break their children’s bones to teach them a lesson are criminals, not good parents. I can accept that God’s purposes and plan are so vastly beyond my human pea-brain that I cannot hope to understand them, but I also have to believe that God knows that snapping children’s bones in two to teach them a lesson is cruelty, not loving discipline.

I do not believe my bone disorder was given in order to serve some greater purpose (even if it does end up serving some greater purpose) because I do not believe in a cruel God, and I do believe in a God who created us to have whole, pain-free, immortal bodies. Remember: Death and pain were not part of the original plan, and Jesus not only healed people of their physical ailments (albeit not in isolation from their spiritual need for repentance and forgiveness), but also defeated the ultimate result of bodies that don’t work as God intended them to—death.

The second option for explaining my condition—and perhaps the one Becker is advocating for, at least in terms of Down syndrome—is that genetic disorders are a manifestation of human diversity that we need to honor. But I cannot accept my bone disorder as value-neutral—just another human difference that people need to accept. It is a difference that demands acceptance, but that is not all it is.

A few days ago, a friend whose daughter also has OI was confronted by a brazen stranger who asked, “What’s wrong with her?” My friend’s response was, “Nothing. Normal is just a setting on the washing machine.” A great answer, a true answer. Nothing is wrong, in a fundamental sense of our human identity as children of God, with those who have genetic disorders, cancer, brain injuries, paralysis, or the flu. But something is wrong with our bodies. They are not as they should be, not as God intended. While I do not advocate fixing what’s wrong at all costs—I think there are compelling, important reasons that Christians, for example, should tread carefully when considering the use of reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to screen out genetic disease at the embryonic stage—I do think there are plenty of disabilities that need correcting. Including mine.

Ellen Painter Dollar is a writer who focuses on Christian reproductive ethics and disability theology. She is writing a book for Westminster John Knox Press (forthcoming in 2011) about the ethics and theology of assisted reproduction and genetic screening. She blogs at ChoicesThatMatter.blogspot.com and Five Dollars and Some Common Sense. “Speaking Out” is Christianity Today‘s guest opinion column and (unlike an editorial) does not necessarily represent the opinion of the magazine.

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Ellen Painter Dollar is responding to Amy Julia Becker’s piece, “Considering ‘Curing’ Down Syndrome with Caution.”

Al and Ellen Hsu wrote on having a child with Down syndrome. Christianity Today recently editorialized on how churches should embrace people with disabilities.

My grandmother was great, but she had that special mother-in-law gift of raising my mother’s blood pressure. A well-timed comment about cooking or child-rearing would leave my mom stammering and defensive.

As a teenager, I would walk by and whisper, “Water off a duck’s back, Mom.” She came to understand my code—Let it go; Nana doesn’t mean anything by it, and we know you’re a good wife and mother—and my whispers usually helped. But now I wish I had known to say, “Roll it onto God, Mom.”

Psalm 37:5 tells us to “commit your way to the Lord.” Translated, this verse says something like, “roll onto Jehovah thy way.” At certain family dinners, that means passing the gravy and “rolling” the need to defend ourselves—as well as our more serious needs and concerns—onto God.

Jesus was quoting from Psalm 37 when he said the meek will inherit the earth, and it turns out that the whole psalm is a primer on meekness. I have always been a little over-meek (reticent, shy, too deferential). So when I read the Bible and find the meek congratulated, I’m delighted.

But there’s a catch. It turns out that only two people in Scripture are described as “meek”: Moses and Jesus. So meekness likely has little to do with timidity.

If meekness isn’t weakness, what is it? The word has an association with domesticated animals, specifically beasts of burden. At first blush, this etymology doesn’t thrill me; I don’t particularly aspire to be ox-like. But when I think about it, an ox at the plow is not weak but extraordinarily strong. The key, though, is that his power is harnessed and directed. Perhaps meekness is strength that is submitted to an appropriate authority.

Shortly after I began writing this column, I found myself in rare conflict with a friend. At first I thought my anger was giving me strength, bolstering my courage so I could deal with the issues. But the anger soon betrayed me, sapping my energy and compromising my ability to act according to wisdom and divine direction. It’s only as I have turned my hurt—and the overwhelming urge to prove that I’m right—over to God that I’ve begun to be able to respond (and sometimes resist responding) from a place of holy, rather than human, strength.

Psalm 37 is all about strength in meekness. It deals with trusting God to be God, and with not trying to do his job. The meek, for example, don’t repay evil for evil; they rely on God for justice (vv. 1-3). Several verses mention that the meek don’t fret. And the meek let God provide their hearts’ desires rather than trying to manipulate people and circ*mstances to get what they want (v. 4).

How much energy do I expend trying to secure provisions, control outcomes, and manage people’s perceptions of me? Psalm 37 tells us that the meek give that labor up. They trust God’s claims that he will provide, protect, and defend, and in so doing free up resources for putting their hands to God’s plow. It’s a good plan.

But here’s the thing: I would be fine with rolling my burdens onto God if I were guaranteed resolution. There’s a joke that describes the effects of playing a country song backwards: Your spouse returns, your dog is resurrected, and your truck starts working again. I wish that surrender to God worked the same way.

But faith isn’t like that. The biblical witness is that circ*mstances often get more challenging, not less, when one’s way is committed to the Lord. So why roll it onto God if “it” (the need, circ*mstance, quarrelsome friend, or critical in-law) isn’t necessarily going to get fixed?

There are stories about prisoners in Nazi camps who were made to move heavy boulders from one end of a field to the other, only to carry them back again. Many of the men were eventually driven mad, not by the backbreaking nature of the work, but by its futility.

It isn’t the experience of being misunderstood (or suffering or poverty) itself that will undo us, but rather the sense that we are enduring hardship to no good end. That’s why the apostle Paul emphasized that we do not labor in vain (1 Cor. 15:58). We discover there is no wasted effort or pain, because there is nothing that God cannot redeem.

I have a choice. I can wear myself out pushing the boulders of my life around my prison yard. Or I can be meek, and roll those burdens onto God. I’m not sure exactly what Jesus meant when he said the meek will “inherit the earth,” but I’ve certainly discovered that this world is a better place when I roll it off my shoulders and into his hands.

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

See Reflections for quotations on meekness.

More Christianity Today columns by Carolyn Arends are available on our site, including:

Our Divine Distortion | We can’t see God clearly without Jesus. O come, Emmanuel. (December 18, 2009)

Come, Lord Jesus | Oh, wait. He’s already here. (October 12, 2009)

Matter Matters | Lessons learned between the couch and a 10k race. (July 27, 2009)

Big news out of Waco: Kenneth Starr (yes, that Kenneth Starr) will be the new president of Baylor University.

Formerly Solicitor General of the United States, he has been a very prominent dean of Pepperdine University’s School of Law (partly for his work at the school, and partly for his ongoing law work, like defending California’s Proposition 8).

The Waco Tribune-Herald reports:

His national stature could potentially swell Baylor’s endowment with expressions of support, but the controversial nature of that stature could impact Baylor’s image as well.

An immediate challenge for Starr, however, lies closer to home. An ongoing feud between the Baylor administration and the Baylor Alumni Association has been racheted up in the last few months as the administration first made, then withdrew peaceful overtures for the BAA to be absorbed by Baylor and lose its independent status.

Starr must also be mindful of the Baylor faculty, which played a key role in the [July 2008] ouster of [John] Lilley after a highly controversial denial of tenure for a dozen professors. One source said the faculty representatives to the presidential search met Starr with a high degree of skepticism, but were ultimately won over by Starr’s personality.

Steve Sjogren has participated in launching five churches. Recently he has focused his energy on coaching others who are committed to outward-focused living. Sjogren is author of many books including the best-selling Conspiracy of Kindness.

Most books emphasize one-on-one evangelism. You write more about doing evangelism as a community. Why?

I find it incredibly exciting. I love to do a service project and touch larger numbers of people. It’s exhilarating to get out there and seed the community. Everyone on the team ends up high-fiving each other. You realize, “We just touched five hundred or a thousand people,” And it wasn’t just “Here’s a bottle of water.” We actually got to talk to all those people, even if it was just for a few moments to hand them a card that said, “This is to show you Christ’s love.” There’s an upward spiral effect, an enthusiasm that builds. People start laughing and telling stories and evangelism becomes easy because the courage is contagious.

I think in our day there’s a chronic shortage of joy in evangelism. The whole idea of having fun and high-fiving each other is almost completely foreign to us. But it is out there. We just have to find people that are willing to go out with us and find joy in doing these things together.

You write that “Evangelism is one of those emotionally charged words that sends shivers of guilt running up and down our spine.” Should we retire the word evangelism?

No, I think we need to think about it differently. These days the word evangelist is being used by lots of other people. There are car salesmen that call themselves “BMW evangelists” or “Chevrolet evangelists.” They think, eat, drink, and sleep their product. Because of this marketing usage, it’s actually become a positive word again.

When I’m on a plane now and a churched person asks what I do and I say, “I’m an evangelist,” my response is a turnoff. But if it’s a non-Christian in sales, or in any kind of business, they immediately know what I’m talking about. There’s no negativity at all. They hear it as a synonym for enthusiast. But in the minds of long-term church people, it can be a negative. But I think we need to get over it. Its biblical roots are too important. When the angels announce the birth of Jesus, we see the Greek word from which we get evangelism—euangelion. So we are partners with the angels when we do evangelism. We are doing what the angels do. That’s powerful.

A lot of people are hurting financially, but in hard times they may be more open spiritually. How can church leaders help people fill that void?

We need to redouble our evangelism efforts. We should be thinking less about maintaining and more about reaching out. If we’re not there for people during this very difficult time, we’re not acting as the church. It’s like 9/11 all over again. We will look back in ten years and realize that this was an opportunity to begin relationships with the people in our community. People are scared, and they’re looking for answers, but they don’t know where to turn.

All our internally-focused messages need to become more outward-focused. Every time we bring our garbage cans in we need to bring in the garbage cans for our neighbors on both sides of our houses. We need to be bringing in their papers too. We need to be praying prayers that are too deep for words, as Paul says. This is an amazing time, and these present conditions might be here to stay. I think we’ve prayed too long for relief and we need to start praying for reality to set in for the church.

Resources on Community Based Ministry

Conspiracy of Kindness:A unique approach to sharing the love of Jesus.Steve Sjogren

The Church of Irresistible Influence:Bridge-building stories to help reach your community.by Robert Lewis and Rob Wilkins

Church is a Team Sport:A championship strategy for doing ministry together.by Jim Putman

Copyright © 2010 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

I can think of no better way to show how insidious personal illustrations are to preaching than to share a personal illustration. I'm aware of the irony, but it can't be helped.

Trying to drive home a point about grace in a sermon I preached at my home church, I told about the time when my wife made me angry and I put my fist into a wall in our dining room. Unfortunately, I picked a place in the wall behind which stood an immovable two-by-four. I broke a knuckle. My wife, who had every reason to avoid me for a week or so, treated me gently and took me to the emergency room.

Any preacher worth his or her salt will know how to take this bare outline and milk it to the max. And I did. I inserted telling details and funny one-liners. I paused dramatically at the right moments to let the tension build. I ended with a nice turn of phrase that put the whole incident in a poignant cast. I mean, it was good.

Too good, apparently, because to this day, years later, people will remark, "I still remember that sermon you preached where you told about putting your fist into the wall."

They don't remember Jesus. They remember me. They tell me how vulnerable I was to tell such a story on myself. They tell me how much they laughed. They never talk about grace.

Truth through my personality

This sort of thing happens innocently, starting with the best of motives. A friend on the East Coast told me recently about his pastor. Apparently the man is a gifted communicator. He struts up and down the stage like a comedian at a night club. His sermons are always biblical in content, orthodox in theology, and aiming to bring people to Jesus Christ.

My friend has noted though how this pastor begins every sermon with a personal illustration. The illustration may be about something that happened to him in college, or to him and his wife on a recent trip, or to his kids (three boys between first and fifth grade). Lately this pastor has also been concluding his sermons with a personal illustration, and a few times, a personal illustration has been the hinge in the middle of the sermon.

My friend says he's slowly become aware that the medium has become the message—the sermon has inadvertently become a showcase of the pastor's life and faith—and this by a pastor who my friend describes as humble and desperate to win people to Christ.

Phillips Brooks once described preaching as "Truth through personality." Indeed. But with the flowering of the personal illustration, preaching often morphs into "the truth of my personality."

Saturday night temptation

It was just a generation ago that the personal illustration was suspect. Homiletics professors frowned on the preacher bringing himself or his family into the sermon. It was unseemly, not serious exposition. But the 1960s introduced the therapeutic age. Today, the personal illustration is de rigueur. If you don't use personal illustrations, people wonder whether you are authentic.

The sermon has inadvertently become a showcase of the pastor's life and faith. Less about the centrality and greatness of Jesus.

This is one reason we're so easily tempted to illustrate the gospel with our lives. In a therapeutic culture, we are anxious to connect with listeners in a personal way. The personal illustration is the easiest way to do that, especially if you can describe a personal flaw or mistake humorously.

Here's another reason we're tempted: When it's Saturday night, and you are desperate for an illustration to kick off the sermon or drive home the main point, there is nothing so handy as a quick mental search through our memories. It's almost as instant and reliable as Google! And so much easier than plowing through dozens of books, publications, or even illustrations on PreachingToday.com.

Finally, we're hooked on personal illustrations because our listeners adore them. They love a good story, especially if it's a funny story about a pastor's most embarrassing moment or about cute kids doing cute things in the pastor's home. It makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy and connected. It's so much more interesting than theology or the Bible! And it makes people like the pastor. Who doesn't want to be liked?

Three new homiletic habits

I've come to believe, however, that if we can't break the personal illustration addiction, we'll slowly but surely leave listeners with a new gospel: "Pastor Bill is such an authentic man, with a wonderful family—and such a great sense of humor!" People will recall vividly stories about the pastor's kids or those marital spats, or that sudden revelation at the Grand Canyon, and only have a relatively vague idea of the grace and greatness of Jesus Christ.

To battle this addiction in my own preaching, I'm trying three approaches, which I've rediscovered are classic homiletic moves.

1. Illustrate like Jesus. I'm trying to draw more examples from everyday life, and not my everyday life. I try to think of things I've observed about nature or daily life in the suburbs. Or I'll create an analogy or make a stab at a parable.

2. Illustrate with the Bible. This was a favorite technique of the early church fathers. A preacher in my church is a master of this. To illustrate how we disobey God, he rehearses the story of Jonah. To illustrate the feeling of despair, he'll read something from the Psalms or Lamentations. This not only illustrates the point at hand, but it helps biblically illiterate listeners learn their Bible.

3. Illustrate with discretion. Sometimes I build from a personal experience, but do so in a way that doesn't draw attention to me. If I want to show how fickle we are at being grateful, I could describe a scene at my dinner table when my kids were young, how they'd argue about who "had to" say grace. This could easily be crafted into a cute homiletical story about my family. Or it can be universalized, that is, it can be told in such a way that it is about an experience everyone has had: "Many families know how reluctantly we are to give thanks—just think of how many dinner table arguments we've heard over whose turn it is—and isn't!—to say grace …"

If well crafted, an allusion communicates that, yes, I have experienced this sort of thing—thus helping people see that I'm not preaching six feet above them. But it doesn't draw their attention to me, but to the common human experience we all share.

Even if we avoid personal illustrations altogether, it does not guarantee people will remember and have a vivid impression of Jesus Christ. But at least we will not inadvertently become the focus. To be sure—to boycott or severely restrict the number of personal illustrations makes sermon preparation much harder! But in the long run, I believe it will make us better preachers through whom the truth of Christ reverberates.

Mark Galli is senior managing editor of Christianity Today, and author of A Great and Terrible Love: A Spritual Journey into the Attributes of God (Baker).

Copyright © 2010 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

When it comes to pre-teen/teen fantasy, the Harry Potter universe is a rare treat of relatable characters, emotional storytelling, exciting adventures, and fairly complex ruminations about life, death and growing up. It’s a full feast.

In comparison, the new film Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief is sort of like macaroni & cheese. And honestly, who doesn’t like macaroni & cheese? It’s tasty. But nutritional, decadent, rich, satisfying, and lasting? Maybe not so much. While this new flick may not have Potter’s complex world, deeper themes, and multiple layers, it also doesn’t have the angst, heaviness and darkness. Instead, it replaces them with one thing in bulk: Fun.

Harry Potter’s saga clearly influences Percy’s story, but this film is not some cheap rip-off pushed by a studio to rake in money. It’s actually an adaptation of author Rick Riordan’s No. 1 New York Times bestselling book from 2005 (the final installment of the five-book series, The Last Olympian, came out last spring). The award-winning books were written by a former Greek mythology teacher after reading the sagas of the ancient Greek heroes as bedtime stories to his son. The result is a quickly-paced, action-heavy, exciting movie that melds the Harry Potter series with a dash of National Treasure and a whole bunch of Clash of the Titans. (This film, like the first two Potter flicks, was directed by Chris Columbis.)

Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) is a normal high-school student who’s convinced he’s a loser. His learning disabilities and ADHD have him feeling low and discouraged. How can he ever achieve anything? But everything changes during a school field trip. While discussing Greek mythology, an attack by a mythical beast reveals to Percy a much bigger world of adventure and heroism.

As Percy recovers from the bizarre attack, his teacher (Pierce Brosnan) and a friend reveal to Percy that he’s no loser but actually a demi-god (half-human, half-god—like Hercules), and his dad is Poseidon (Kevin McKidd). After a childhood of his true lineage being hidden, he is now hunted—falsely accused of stealing the lightning bolt of Zeus (Sean Bean). With an epic clash of the titans on the horizon, the world’s only hope is Percy’s quest—with his protective satyr Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) and fellow demi-god Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario)—across America, into Hades and to Mount Olympus.

Fans of the book should know that this is not a literal, page-by-page adaptation like the first Harry Potter movie. A lot of details are changed. While the book is from Percy’s point of view, the movie pulls back to show the bigger picture—even starting with a discussion between Zeus and Poseidon. Instead of the paced unfolding of Percy’s identity, the set-up is blown through so that we can get right into all the fun of the Percy’s journey. The movie sprints from big set-piece to bigger set-piece in a world full of satyrs, furies, hydras, centaurs, and more. My favorite moments: When the heroes confront Medusa (played with delicious abandon by Uma Thurman) in a genuinely intense sequence, and when they pull into Vegas for a truly inspired modern riff on the myth of the lotus eaters.

While there is not much time spent on story themes, a few messages surface. Percy learns that what seem like challenges and handicaps can actually be gifts that help to make you who you are. Percy’s relationship with his mother is, for the most part, healthy and inspiring. He learns how much parents sacrifice for their children—and how it can be taken for granted. Still, I couldn’t help but feel like some of these lessons were a bit too easy. Complicated and complex relationship issues (like why Poseidon abandoned his love and their son) feel airbrushed and skated over. In fact, as you think about the film’s plot, you not only see story holes but also some serious issues that are not really dealt with. For instance, heroic and good Percy seems to set a deadly trap to kill his mom’s slimeball boyfriend—and it’s played for laughs.

As far as the Greek mythology central to the film, it’s presented very much like modern tellings of The Odyssey or any Greek myth. Percy’s world is one where the Greek gods and goddesses (and all their assorted minions and creatures) exist behind the scenes of human life. Some young viewers may be confused by the relation of these gods to our God, but the gods and goddesses here are more or less a legion of giant superheroes with great powers. They are not worshipped or even particularly liked by anyone.

Looking at works like C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, I believe Christians can view Greek myth as a way to talk about humanity, the longings inside us for something greater than ourselves, how we’ve historically seen our place in the world, and real biblical truths. And while discussing Scripture is not the intention behind Percy Jackson, after-movie conversations could certainly go in that direction (see the Talk About It section below). One line that really made me think of the true God was when Poseidon affectionately tells Percy: “Just because you didn’t see me, didn’t mean I wasn’t there.”

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. What does the existence of these Greek myths about gods and goddesses say about how humans have viewed the world and their place in it? Why tell stories about powerful gods and goddesses like this?
2. Think about how the gods in this film interact with and view humans. How is that similar and different from how you think God interacts with and views humans?
3. A character in Hades says “All lives end in suffering and tragedy.” Do you agree? Why or why not? Why would Greek myth have contended that?
4. A character says “All gods are selfish.” What do you think of that? Why would the ancient Greeks have crafted tales about flawed gods like this? What does that say for our view of the supernatural?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief is rated PG for action violence and peril, some scary images and suggestive material, and mild language. There is a lot of action, violence and fighting. Some sword fighting between humans results in blood and cuts. Characters die; one is decapitated and the severed head is shown many times—without blood. There are several scary monsters including Hades who appears as a big, Satan-like fiery, winged beast. The mild language is pretty much limited to a profane reference to being a horse’s rear-end. A character drinks a lot of beer. A male character is very girl-crazy and frequently jumps into what seem to be sexual situations, including staying with an older woman who is seducing him and getting into a hot tub with Aphrodite’s daughters. There is also discussion about the gods “hooking up” with mortals.

Photos © Fox 2000 Pictures

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Sara Miles recounted her “radical conversion” in her previous book, Take This Bread. She continues the story in this new book—part memoir, part manifesto for “Feeding / Healing / Raising the Dead.”