Wilderness practice

By Josh Hunt

It was just a few years ago that Rev. Linda Nye, then one of
my student colleagues at the divinity school at Gardner-Webb University and an
Episcopal priest, invited me to her parish for Ash Wednesday. It
was my first such experience. 

The observance of Lent that year changed completely my celebration of Easter Sunday. Easter felt more victorious, more real, more celebratory, more life-affirming, more welcomed.

How could I experience Easter in such a way one year and then conscientiously choose not to celebrate it that way again? I couldn’t.

Linda Nye caused me to develop the tradition of observing Lent. I saw how it changed my spiritual life and I could not go back.

I didn’t grow up observing Lent. It’s still novel to me. It’s still novel to my church. In fact, I spend a lot of time and effort each Ash Wednesday and the first Sunday in Lent reminding myself and my congregation of why this is a valid and valuable season in the Church Year, and why it is worthy of our attention and observance.

I’ve come to understand Lent as an opportunity to journey into the wilderness in practice mode, to simulate hitting rock bottom in a controlled environment. We have the opportunity to journey into this season in community. We confess and repent. We pray. We meditate. We practice silence. We empty ourselves of some of the stuff that may not be worthy to fill our lives in the first place.

We find God in the wilderness.

And if we can see God’s love and redemption and grace at work in the “practice mode” wilderness of Lent, we might have a better opportunity to see God in the real-world wilderness that begins not in a predictable way on Ash Wednesday, but in an unpredictable way in a doctor’s consultation room, in a funeral home chapel, in a lawyer’s office, or at the bottom of a bottle.

I choose to journey into the wilderness of Lent so that I might be better prepared when the wilderness comes against my will.

-Josh Hunt is pastor of Ross Grove Baptist Church in Shelby, N.C., and is keeping up his blogging resolution deep into February.

More than enough glory to go around

By Josh Hunt

We came by the dozens, representing diverse congregations and multiple Christian denominations. A local civic organization had invited the Christian clergy of Shelby, N.C., to a luncheon held in our honor at the local country club. 

Our host asked us to stand one by one and briefly—they emphasized the word briefly because they knew the stripes of those to whom they were speaking—briefly share about what God is doing in our churches and ministries. 

What followed from many of my colleagues was a summary of building projects, budget increases and numbers of baptisms. 

Are these the marks of a good church, a successful ministry and minister? Are these the indicators of a faithful people and a faithful God? 

Let me pull back the curtain just a bit on this profession and some of the professionals in it. Like the Hindenburg, the ministerial ego is gigantic, fragile, poorly designed, unsafe, and often deflated and grounded only after a spectacular failure and blaze of glory.  “Oh, the humanity!” — indeed.

We can be territorial. Competitive.  Flashy. 

We can be attention seeking and attention drawing. Tenacious. 

We can be hungry and thirsty for more money, and more people, and more spaces in which to gather even more money and even more people. Insatiable. 

We can be holy headhunters, ordained organizational consultants, glorified investment brokers who are quick to remind our congregations and community that they are, indeed, receiving a fantastic return on their investments in us. 

We can project being indispensable and irreplaceable. Some of us love our titles — and we will be addressed accordingly, thank you very much. 

God is working tremendously through us and our ministries. Among the many things for which we’re thankful, we’re most grateful for the fact that there’s enough glory for God and us to share.

And if by some chance we’re not like that? Well, there’s something wrong with us, and the congregations we serve are to be pitied.

Sometimes I wish you could hear us, because your presence might change what we say and how we say it.  Most of the time I’m glad our conversations with each other are private, because I think the metrics we use to determine success in ministry are embarrassing to the Body of Christ.

The French call it l'esprit de l'escalier, the wisdom of the stairwell. It’s what you wish you had said back there — wherever and whenever back there is. I’m glad the French have a word for it, because it happens to me an awful lot. 

I didn’t say this when I stood from my polished oak chair in the country club dining room at lunch the other day. But when I got to the stairwell, I wish I had.

“I won’t — and, quite frankly, I can’t — compete in your…your…certain kind of contest for baptisms, budgets and buildings. I cede that game to you. You win. I might not perform as many baptisms as you do. I might not get paid as much as you do, and I don’t have a building project to speak of.  I can, nonetheless, report that God is at work in the church I am privileged to serve, that God is at work in the lives of the people of the church I am privileged to serve, and that God is at work in my ministry and in my life. Oh, the Divinity!”

 Josh Hunt is pastor of Ross Grove Baptist Church in Shelby, North Carolina.

A germinating thought

By Josh Hunt

Some scientists have developed a theory which states that our concern with being germ-free might actually be detrimental to our health. 

They suggest that we allow hand sanitizers and anti-bacterial soaps to do what our bodies are actually designed to do: kill the germs that would make us sick.

The cells that are intended to attack bad germs do not suddenly lose their sense of purpose just because they have fewer germs to attack. They continue to attack, these scientists believe, and since there are fewer outside germs to attack, they turn on the body of which they are a part, and attack healthy cells. It's one of the theories about why some cancers develop.

Take the theory with a grain of salt if you wish. And please take my layman's terms and reporting of the theory with a grain of salt. 

But whether this scientific postulation holds water or not biologically, I know this phenomena in the church as a pastor. 

We have work to do, a calling to fulfill, energy to expend. When we aren't given the opportunity or don't take the opportunity to busy ourselves with the work that should keep us busy, we turn on each other. We attack the body of which we are a part.

Therefore, let the Church — and all the members thereof — be busy with the work to which we have been called. May we be too busy to nitpick, to venture into the peanut gallery, to turn on each other.

-Josh Hunt is pastor of Ross Grove Baptist Church in Shelby, N.C.

It's not easy bein' free

By Josh Hunt

Some time ago, the members of my preaching group had the opportunity to go on a preaching retreat/workshop. The three-day gathering afforded us plenty of opportunities to chat. 

As the lone Baptist voice at the gathering, I got several questions which are drawn from Baptist stereoypes.
 
By the way, do you want an unconventional way to observe the season of Epiphany? Here’s a fun, epiphanic experiment. Ask someone who comes from a tradition other than your own what they know and think about Baptists. Brace yourself for their response. 

We should all resolve to be involved in more ecumenical and interfaith conversations. Such dialogue helps us sharpen our knowledge about our own tradition and assists us in learning about traditions other than our own, and both of these things are very good.
 
When some of my United Methodist friends were talking about their District Conference business, I took the opportunity to ask them about Methodist polity — how their denomination makes decisions. We discussed districts, charges, Bishops, District Superintendents, Pastor-Parish Relation Committees, etc.
 
"That's a bit different than the way Baptists have traditionally understood our polity," I offered.
 
One of my Methodist friends turned to me with a smirk on his face and said, "Do Baptists even have a polity? Do you guys even have church discipline?"
 
"Yes, we have a polity," I said, "but it isn't always very disciplined.” (Sometimes I’m guilty of understatement.)  “Our polity is freedom."
 
He rolled his eyes.
 
"No, I'm serious. What I mean by freedom is that when the Baptist movement was formed, we were the underdogs, the illegals, the outsiders. (My Methodist colleagues, serving as they do in a county that sometimes feels saturated with Baptist churches — Baptist churches that sometimes aim to scoop even the most die-hard Methodists into their membership — probably cannot imagine such a scenario.)  And we swore to ourselves that if we ever got into power, we'd be all about freedom — for ourselves and freedom for others, even with folks with whom we disagree. You have Bishops and District Superintendents, but we believe in what we call the 'autonomy of the local church,' which has historically meant that no denominational authority outside of my church can tell my church what we must believe or do."
 
This raised more questions. "What about the church in Mt. Airy that called a woman as their pastor and got kicked out of their association for doing so?"
 
It wasn’t the first time someone asked me about Baptist life framed in a question regarding the events at Mt. Airy a few months ago.
 
"Well, there IS that," I replied. "That wasn't necessarily a violation of Flat Rock's autonomy; they were technically able to call a woman as pastor. I'd say it was more the association's violation of historic Baptist principles, but there are many Baptists who would disagree."
 
Could our Baptist ancestors have chosen a more messy polity with which to govern our churches? Freedom? Autonomy? What were they thinking? 

We can cheer the freedom that is an essential part of the Baptist birth story, but we need to own that ours is a messy system, and one of the implications of freedom is that we allow other people the room to disagree with us. It means that we allow other people the opportunity to choose what we consider to be the wrong path. 

Autonomy allows room for churches to disagree with one another— for church members to disagree with one another — to do the wrong thing, to take the wrong position. Early Baptists just plain ol' didn't like the alternative, and they suffered greatly so that what we inherited from them would be better than what they saw as lacking alternative systems of church governance.
 
A polity of freedom is not easy, but it’s what we’ve got. It’s a crucial part of who we are as Baptists.

What It’s Like to Be God’s Favorite

By Josh Hunt

For the last couple of months or so, I’ve been ruminating on something Dr. Alan Culpepper wrote in his commentary on the Gospel of Mark (Smyth and Helwys, p. 285): “Who we believe Jesus was has a direct bearing on what it means to be his disciple.”

Dr. Culpepper’s context is the application of Mark 8:27-30, when Jesus asks his disciples who people say he is. Peter’s glowing confession comes eventually, after some prodding from the one who asked the question, but not before a few of Jesus’ friends get it wrong.

Jesus’ friends still get it wrong.

Could the reverse of Dr. Culpepper’s statement be true as well? Does one’s approach to discipleship convey what he or she believes about Jesus? 

What does our discipleship — the ways in which we relate to God and to others — say about who we believe Jesus was?

Let me offer an example. If you don’t believe in total depravity, read the comments on most websites or blogs. It’s a discouraging exercise and I can’t recommend it. 

When I read comments posted on the Associated Baptist Press news site, I wonder if our words communicate our belief that Jesus’ favorite part of the Church is our propensity toward self-congratulations for not being like the parts of the Church with whom we disagree. That’s certainly what we spend an inordinate amount of time and energy doing, especially when a bunch of us get together and we start hatching a plan to fix all that’s wrong with Christendom.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, he told this parable: Two men went to pray, one a Cooperative Baptist missionary (who had given the last five years of his life ministering to the poor in the kinds of locales where missionaries didn’t normally go) and the other a member of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The missionary stood by himself and prayed: “God I thank you that I am not like other people — prosperity Gospel preachers, conservatives, inerrantists, homophobes, and chauvinists — or even like that Southern Baptist official over there, bless his heart.”

But the Southern Baptist stood at a distance and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

You know the rest.

Just as in Jesus’ parable in Luke, my re-telling is not an attempt to glorify or demonize particular characters that appear in it, but rather as a cautionary tale. 

We drink in the sweet nectar of what we determine are the failures and mistakes and wrong thinking of the people with whom we disagree — neighboring congregations and denominations, professors who moved into our offices after we were fired, pastors who are sell-outs, church staff who are corrupt — and we congratulate ourselves for being so open-minded, so informed, so extraordinarily different than they are. 

In our depraved minds, their failures prove that our way of thinking is right. Our hands cease being productive so we can use them to pat ourselves on the back for being sufficiently holy, set apart from the people we know to be God’s little embarrassments. 

If our highest offering to God is how different we are from the other people God loves, we’re to be pitied, and our message of new life and changed hearts reeks of insincerity. 

What’s the alternative to this egotistical, self-righteous, condescending, ultimately close-minded way of thinking?  A little less moral superiority and certitude.  A little more “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” 

Jesus’ friends still get it wrong.

-Josh Hunt is pastor of Ross Grove Baptist Church in Shelby, N.C.