Giving Credit to God

We've all seen a pro athlete make a great play and point skyward or take a knee in prayer, presumably giving a little credit or thanks to God. There's alot to be said about this habit. Some good, some bad.

But this weekend, an NFL player took this whole thing to a whole new level. Steve Johnson is a wide receiver for the Buffalo Bills. He also has a Twitter account. Last week, Johnson caught 3 touchdown passes and was quick to give God some credit for his success. This was his tweet after the game:

"Jus Goes To Sho God Is Good N Real! Keep Faith Thru Good N Bad."

This weekend was a different story. In overtime, Johnson has a pass thrown his way in the endzone. If he catches it, the game is over and the Bills win. He drops it. Pittsburgh goes on to win. After the game, Johnson's "tweet" takes on a very different tone:

"I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME !!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO..."

Sorry to break this to you Steve, but God didn't drop that pass. You did. The truth is we all drop a pass from time to time. We mess up. We just don't do the thing we really should do. If you're a human being, it just goes with the territory.

So what do we do when we "drop a pass?" It's easy to blame somebody else. This is something else we've all done. We justify our dropping the ball by pointing out how somebody else dropped their own pass. But just like Steve Johnson, it isn't someone else who dropped the ball thrown my way.

The hard thing, which usually goes hand in hand with it being the right thing, is to just own it ourselves. Yep, I screwed up. My fault. I dropped the ball, let you down, didn't do the right thing. I'll own it.

You know what I'd love to see? I'd love to see a QB who gets pounded into the ground for a sack and then stands up and points to heaven and thanks God for that. "God thanks for being with me even when it's not going well." Or the running back who fumbles just before he crosses the end zone who kneels in prayer, thanking God for the chance to learn humility.

That would be giving God credit in a powerful way.

Totally unexpected

You've probably seen this video by now. I love this trick play. Kudos to the coach that dreamed this one up. I think my favorite part is the reaction of the defensive linemen when the QB just casually walks right between them. You can just about hear them thinking out loud: "What in the world are you doing?"



I can't help but think that this QB should instantly become a role model for Christians. Here's what I mean: It seems like most of us Jesus followers really prefer our faith to just make us comfortable. Unfortunately, this means that when it comes right down to it, there is very little difference between our lives and the lives of the non-Christians around us. We just blend right in. We go with the flow.

Let me put it this way: When was the last time that your faith led you to do something unexpected? Have you ever found yourself making a choice that left those around you thinking, "What in the world are you doing?"

As we head towards Advent and as the Christmas ads start to ramp up, I'm already finding myself wondering how we are going to respond. Will we just go with the flow and do what's expected? Or will I take the chance to do something totally unexpected? I'm actually quite excited to try to "pull a trick play" this year by exchanging consumption with compassion. Instead of just going with the flow, what if we make it our highest priority to genuinely honor Jesus with every decision we make this Advent? If we really found a way to do that, wouldn't it be a little bit like the QB in this video? What would it look like for us to just walk through, leaving those around us asking, "What the heck just happened?"

The Middle Class Church

Alan Hirsch (pastor & teacher) offers some profound challenges for the church in North America.

His general assessment is that the average church in America is thoroughly middle class. This includes the general demographic, but so much more than that, it also means the church has come to share the general values and behaviors of middle class America.

And in many ways, Hirsch says, you can summarize those values with these words:
Safety
Security
Comfort
Convenience

While these values are totally understandable, and not wrong in and of themselves, when they come to define and shape the church, perhaps we've missed something. It's frankly impossible to read the words of Jesus in the Bible and conclude that the above values are the values of the Kingdom of God.

Hirsch offers this assessment: the pursuit of safety and security will be the death of the church.

Here's the full interview:Alan Hirsch on Community

What do you think?

My job...

There was a great article in the New York Times a while back about the challenge of pastoring in this increasingly consumeristic culture we live in. You can read the whole article here. But here are some exerts.

The pastoral vocation is to help people grow spiritually, resist their lowest impulses and adopt higher, more compassionate ways. But churchgoers increasingly want pastors to soothe and entertain them. It’s apparent in the theater-style seating and giant projection screens in churches and in mission trips that involve more sightseeing than listening to the local people.

At their courageous best, clergy lead where people aren’t asking to go, because that’s how the range of issues that concern them expands, and how a holy community gets formed.

Ministry is a profession in which the greatest rewards include meaningfulness and integrity. When those fade under pressure from churchgoers who don’t want to be challenged or edified, pastors become candidates for stress and depression.

Wow. I'm incredibly convicted by the "courageous best" line. It's a struggle sometimes to find my courageous best. To be sure, the pressure to be entertaining and attractional can definitely beat that courage out of you. I'm afraid that I give in to that pressure more than I care to admit. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that the goal should be to NOT entertain. As if a sermon should instead be yawn-inducing or completely irrelevant.

What really resonates for me about the above quote is that I know I am called to lead where people aren't asking to go. But you deserve my courageous best. I'm sorry for not giving you that. And for sometimes selling you short. I know that many of you are more than willing to chase after Jesus, no matter what. You know better than I do that if the journey is hard, it's hard because it's worth it.

I guess I just want you to know that I'm more excited to chase after it than I have been in quite a while.

Welcome...

The previous incarnation of the Cornfield Labyrinth lasted 3 years. It needed a break. Well, I needed a break. But after 6 months off, I realized that I actually need a place to write. I need a place to "say" the things that unsettle my brain like a burr in your pants. So, it's back. You can still find all the old stuff on my old blog. I changed the name to "Scott's Old Blog." Creative. But that's how I roll.