Give him the jet; We made him

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Recently, several news networks carried the story of a Louisiana preacher named Jesse Duplantis who made a video appeal to his followers to help him raise $54 million dollars to purchase a new private jet (Thanks to my friend Heather for posting this story and bringing it to my attention). You can watch his full video here. According to Duplantis, the jet is necessary because his current jet is unable to go anywhere in the world on a single tank of fuel, whereas the new jet can. Therefore, being able to hop anywhere in the world "in one stop" will enable him to "preach the gospel all over the world" for cheaper.

Immediately after publishing the video, negative and critical comments started flooding in (rightfully so), enough that Duplantis appeared personally on news stations and even issued a second video on his website to defend himself.

We really shouldn't be surprised at the apparent greed of powerful men and the gullibility of their followers. Such realities have always existed both inside and outside the church. Selfish appeals from televangelists are also nothing new. Yet, while it's easy to condemn and criticize hucksters like Duplantis (and such criticisms are deserved), I couldn't help but wonder if we should go ahead and buy him his jet. After all, we are the ones responsible for his appeal.

Duplantis and his ilk do not arise out of a vacuum. The represent many of the values American Christianity and evangelicalism has come to extol, whether consciously or unconsciously.

First, American Christianity has always mirrored society in creating celebrity cults. Such celebrity worship is obvious in the broader culture. A perfect example is the recent multi-day hullabaloo over Roseanne Barr's racist tweet that led to her show getting cancelled. While an unfortunate reminder that racism is still very prevalent today, it was ridiculous how much airtime a single tweet received. Even more ridiculous was the fact that many respected news outlets talked about how the President of United States finally "broke his silence" about the tweet and the show's cancellation (as if the President has nothing better to do than weigh in on celebrity gossip and network lineups). The focus was not really about racism, but about the celebrity.

Sadly, the church is no different. We fill stadiums to witness the spectacle of preachers like Billy Graham, Joel Olsteen, Matt Chandler, Beth Moore, Rob Bell and countless others. Congregations are no longer satisfied with small communities, but must become "mega-churches" centered around a charismatic, well-groomed (often male) celebrity preacher. The best selling books in Christian bookstores are (not incidentally) written by pastors of said mega churches. Our worship leaders get major records deals and utilize the newest, hottest instruments, sound boards, and lights to give us spectacle worthy of U2 or Coldplay. We love our holy celebrities and are willing to pamper them like the kings and queens we believe they are. As such, we really have no right to critique Duplantis for acting like a celebrity when much of the country treats their own pastors the same way.

Second, American Christianity has implicitly taught that sharing the Gospel is the pastor/preacher's job. From the get-go, Duplantis assumes he needs a jet because he assumes it is his job to go across the world personally and speak about the "gospel." Sadly, such a perspective really should reflect a failure of his ministry more than a success in some ways. If his ministry were actually changing lives, then the fruit of that life change would be thousands or millions of folks who are also taking the Gospel into their own communities all around the world. He would not need to frantically fly all over the place. After all, Jesus only preached in a tiny square of the world, but his message is now reaching the ends of the earth because He created real, lasting, transformative change in His disciples.

However, before we criticize Duplantis, we must recognize that most of our churches operate in the same manner. It is the preacher's job to teach and preach, and our job to sit passively and absorb. We are instructed to "bring our friends" to worship services so they can hear the Gospel. Our pastors are seen as religious professionals and experts who do the "real work" of ministry. But this is not how it should be. A pastor's job is to equip the congregation to be the church in its community. Every member is a minister. As long as we continue to view our own pastors as the primary evangelist, teacher, and discipler, then we might as well support Duplantis in his effort to get a new jet because our ecclesiology supports his need to personally travel the world to accomplish his work.

Finally, American evangelicalsim believes in the same truncated gospel as Duplantis. Consistent in Duplantis' request is the idea that "the gospel" is all about "saving souls" in a spiritual sense. While the plan of salvation is certainly good news and of utmost importance, it is not identical to "the Gospel," at least not the one Jesus preached.

In short, the "Gospel" is the good news that the history of Israel is now fulfilled in the life, work, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ who is bringing His Kingdom to earth. This good news includes the plan of salvation, but is not limited to it. Implied in the gospel Jesus and His disciples preached is a demand to participate in God's Kingdom here and now, which means also working in physical, tangible realities, not simply abstract, spiritual truths. "Good news" means taking care of the poor and oppressed, standing up for truth and justice, and imagining creative ways to tell the story of God in our communities. It means confronting both the personal, invisible sins within each of us that keep us separated from God and confronting the societal, visible sins that alienate all of us from the good life God created in the beginning.

A $54 million jet has rightly been condemned as a wasteful expense when the same money could benefit so many other ministries who are proclaiming the gospel in more holistic ways. How many hungry children could we feed in our communities with that money? How many expecting mothers could we house who are debating abortion because of financial fears? How many Bibles could we print? How many water wells could we drill? How many foreign missionaries already embedded in foreign countries could we support?

But, maybe we don't deserve to ask those questions because many of us believe in the same gospel as Duplantis. We believe in a gospel which says the only thing that matters is getting people to "believe" and say a prayer. All that matters is "winning souls." If that is our gospel, then of course it makes perfect sense to send a man all around the world, pack stadiums and parks full of as many people as you can, and use lights and emotional music to prompt them to come to the altar. I'm sure you can efficiently rack up a ton of "decisions" with a private jet.

So, why not? It may seem crass, but his request may be an honest presentation of our biggest faults we hide under the rug as American Christians. So, let's buy him his jet. He might be more effective than us at fulfilling our own vision of church and the gospel after all.

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Baptism and Racism

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I recently started reading Jim Wallis' newest book "America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America." I'm only part way through it, but so far there has been lots of good food for thought for white Christians and white churches who often neglect issues of race in our liturgy and worship, preferring to pretend that racism is a "political issue" not a "faith issue."

However, early on, there is one quote that jumped out at me. In the opening chapter, Wallis writes:
"The political and economic problems of race are ultimately rooted in a theological problem. The churches have too often "baptized" us into our racial divisions, instead of understanding how our authentic baptism unites us above and beyond our racial identities."

I think Wallis is onto something here. In American Christianity, particularly the white evangelical variety, we tend to preach and adhere to what Scot McKnight calls the "soterian (or 'salvation') gospel." The "gospel" that gets preached from our pulpits is that you are a sinner, Jesus died for your sins, and so you must believe these truths and put your faith in Jesus and you will be saved from hell and death. Frequently this gospel is also accompanied by a gnostic over-emphasis on heaven as the final destination of the saved, rather than an emphasis on bodily resurrection.

As McKnight and others point out, this "soterian gospel" ends up being extremely individualistic. The "Gospel" is good news for me. Jesus died for my sins. The point of Jesus' life and death was so I could get into heaven. Even within more Reformed traditions that point back to God's glory as the purpose for His actions, the center of the narrative still remains focused on God's actions for individuals.

To bring this back to Wallis' quote, if we are believing an individualized gospel, then it naturally flows that we are also practicing individualistic baptisms. In most baptism services I have seen, the focus of the moment is almost always on the personal profession of faith and the salvation of the one being baptized. Don't get me wrong, that focus is good, but it's incomplete.

Usually absent from modern baptisms is any language of being baptized into a community or of entrance into a new kingdom and people that crosses cultures, race, and language. This is unfortunate because the early church understood this concept.

Certainly, such an individualistic gospel and baptism will cause (and is causing) countless theological and practical problems for our churches, but I had never really made the connection between this watered-down baptism (pun not intended) and racial problems we face within the church. This is likely because of my own white privilege. For us white Christians, we simply don't think about race and racism enough and so it's natural never to ever bring such communal aspects into our baptismal liturgies. But, we would if we were paying attention to the Gospel found in the New Testament and to the modern realities around us.

There's good evidence to suggest that Paul's words on baptism and community in Gal. 3:26-29 were actually part of an early baptismal liturgy used during baptisms. In contrast, we reduce the baptism moment into only a celebration of that individual and their own personal salvation. But what would it look like if we used language similar to Gal 3?

"For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise." (Gal. 3:26-29)

For the early church, baptism was less about a symbol of personal conversion to a religious or psychological belief. It was more about an initiation into an entirely new people, culture, and society. Being submitted under the water was not just a symbol of death to sin (as we commonly approach it). It was a ritual depicting death to one's entire old way of life, including one's cultural, racial, and social identities. All those old identities were washed away and you were raised up into Abraham's family, into the people of God. Imagine what it would look like if we recaptured that essence? What if we too disposed and repented of our racial, cultural, and national identities at baptism and allowed ourselves to truly take on a new identity in Christ?

It's no secret that, as Dr. Martin Luther King used to say, that Sunday morning is "the most segregated hour in this nation." Perhaps one reason for this is because the gospel we preach and baptize into falls short of the gospel and baptism of the New Testament. Central to the Bible's Gospel is the fact that Jesus is the fulfillment of the story of Israel, and that He is creating for Himself a new people drawn from every tongue, tribe, and nation.

Paul reiterates this Gospel truth in many of his writings, including when he writes in 1 Corinthians:

"For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit....But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it." (1 Cor. 12:12-13, 24-27)

Central to our baptism is the truth that all other identities are submerged beneath our identity in Christ. We are no longer defined by nationality, gender, race, language, or social status. We are all part of Christ. Perhaps if the Church in America could better grasp and preach this communal truth from both the pulpit and the baptismal, then maybe the Church could be the one to finally lead our country toward the racial equality and healing we so desperately need.

In the words of William Stringfellow, "The issue here [of racism] is not equality among human beings, but unity among human beings....The issue is baptism. The issue is the unity of all humanity wrought by God in the life and work of Christ. Baptism is the sacrament of that unity."

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Faith and Economy

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This past week a study was released that estimated the economic impact of religion on the U.S. economy. The study concluded that the annual revenues of faith-based organizations totaled more than $378 Billion each year, making religion a bigger business than Facebook, Google, and Apple combined! If you read the actual study, you'll also see that the number could even be as high as $4 TRILLION, or nearly one quarter of America's GDP as the good folks over at Get Religion noted. Those are massive numbers!

While listening to NPR yesterday, one of the segments referred to this study. Since the study included organizations as varied as church congregations, social service agencies, and charities, the radio hosts asked the audience if they give to faith-based organizations. The responses were quite eye-opening.

Many (in fact most) of the callers I heard stated they did NOT give to churches or faith-based charities. The reasons given were several: Churches spend too much on themselves; faith-based charities don't offer anything non-faith based charities don't; I want to pay to help people, not to have someone preach; not enough money actually gets to people in need; there's not enough oversight or transparency. I was struck by the repeated cynicism.

However, my shock was likely due to the fact that I live within Christian circles. I have grown up around and worked with many Christian institutions that have done amazing good in communities. But perhaps these responses to the radio question reveal that much of our society does not automatically share that assumption. What do we do with this? What do we take away?

First, it would be rash to simply dismiss the criticisms. We could easily point to the fact that these faith-based charities have helped millions of lives. Or we could point to the largest faith-based sector--healthcare. An estimated 1 in 6 hospital beds in our country belong to a Catholic health system. One response to point out that religion both boosts the economy and helps millions of lives. However, maybe we should approach these criticisms with a bit more humility. Is there any truth to their concerns?

I think many of the concerns I heard on the radio were valid. When it comes to faith-based charities, I think many Christians will blindly give because an organization claims to be "Christian" without doing enough research into how effective the charity actually is. There may indeed be secular organizations that are run more effectively and have better research to support their methods, but sadly many Christians will give money to the one with the "Christian" name.

The same applies to media and entertainment. A "Christian" movie with sub-par plot and production values will be released and Christians will dump their wallets for it because it has a "Christian message." Or we will choose to donate money to Christian radio stations in order to hear more overly-produced, shallow theology, lacking-creativity songs, rather than donate to a public radio station that often prizes journalistic integrity and meaningful, original discussion.

The correlation between religion and money should give us pause, particularly when we see these tendencies among Christians. It is far too easy for Christians to be duped into a shallow commercialism as a substitute for our faith. Greed among both Christians themselves and those marketing to Christians is too strong a temptation. Yes religion is big business, but maybe it shouldn't be quite as big.

Second, we need to listen to the hesitations about giving to faith-based institutions when it comes to local congregations. After faith-based health care, one of the next largest economic segments was individual church congregations. Americans give nearly $75 billion per year to individual churches and religious congregations. In listening to the comments on the radio, this was the type of giving about which people seemed to have the greatest reservations.

But, truth-be-told, I too have big reservations in this area. It's no secret that the majority of the budget for most congregations is spent on the building and grounds. Whether it's a small, dying church overpaying to maintain an aging building, or a megachurch dropping millions for a new state-of-the-art facility complete with stage lights, smoke machines, and a coffee bar, the mentality is the same. I find this a particularly uncomfortable position when I read passages in Scripture, such as Acts 7 where Stephen is killed for challenging the idea that God can be contained to a physical building.

For years churches have assumed that people would give money to them. Or, when giving has waned, we have relied on a good sermon on "tithing" to guilt people into giving. However, those days may be fading fast. If congregations want people to give money, particularly younger people like myself, they will need to re-evaluate how they are spending that money. If congregations continue to spend the vast majority of their budgets on buildings, salaries, and internal programs rather than on ministry to their community, it will be harder and harder to justify the morality of such giving to its members or to the world.

Third, the criticisms of faith-based giving should illuminate a false assumption the church has helped promote. In listening to the various comments on the radio, there was a latent assumption in many of them that faith-based work was somehow inferior to government or secular social services. Embedded within this assumption is the belief that faith-based groups and congregations are primarily focused on "the spiritual." "Yes, churches may give back to their community, but that's not their primary calling," or so the thinking goes.

But churches have also unwittingly pushed this belief. By taming the Gospel down to a mere mental agreement with a set of propositions ("I'm a sinner"--"Jesus died for me"--"If I believe in Him I can go to heaven"), and by reducing our eschatology to an escape to a non-physical dimension called "heaven" we have set up the narrative that the church (and anything relating to faith) is only secondarily concerned with the physical world and with societal concerns. We reason: If it doesn't relate to something "spiritual" or pertain to saving a person's soul, then it doesn't matter.

This is a gross misunderstanding of the Gospel Jesus preached. The Gospel Jesus preached is not about getting into a spiritual realm called heaven; it is about declaring a new allegiance to a Lord and a Kingdom that challenge the empires and powers of the world. A proper understanding of the Gospel should teach us that faith is as much about physical manifestations of grace, mercy, and forgiveness in the world as it is about the personal, inner manifestations of those dynamics of those things. If the church itself could recapture this Kingdom vision of the Gospel, then perhaps the world around us would be less likely to believe the false division between faith, spirituality, and work in the real world.

Finally, this study and the resulting comments should prompt the us to remember religion's broad impact upon society. Our faith not only impacts people's lives in a personal, inward manner, but it has also profoundly shaped our culture for the better. If it were not for religion, there would be far fewer hospitals in our country. If it weren't for the role of faith, countless additional Americans would go hungry and be homeless each year. If it weren't for people and organizations of faith, many orphans and refugees would not be alive today.

The cynicism I heard on the radio tended to too quickly dismiss the massive force of this positive impact. But I can't help but wonder if it's because we as Christians have also neglected this aspect of our faith. As mentioned in my previous point, we have relegated faith to the realm of the personal and metaphysical. Studies like this one should remind us that there is so much more to our faith than that. It should inspire us to continue the work of social justice and compassion for our neighbors. It should drive us to become even more creative within our culture. We can't force outsiders to our faith to accept the positive role of religion in society, but we can live out our faith in such a way that it makes it impossible to ignore this positive impact.

In summary, this study should cause people of faith to both be thankful and to practice introspection. We may be thankful that our faiths have contributed so much good to society. However, we should also take a hard look at our practices and use of money to see when the criticisms of outsiders may in fact be warranted. To do any less would be to forsake our calling in the world.