Eschatology Today

Inaugurated Eschatology: (n.) The wonderful already-but-not-yet tension and reality of redemption. Read the theological reflections of Pastor Jay and others around him below. This is a great place to dialog about the beauties of the Gospel!

Don't Regret Your Christmas Break

First, you will survive this week of finals. Students have been surviving, even in secular schools, for eons now. Keep your perspective. Remember what is most important. Remember that it is always about Jesus' glory, and bring glory to him by doing your best, with balance, avoiding idolatry of grades, esteem with profs, and man centered efforts to impress people, even your parents.

Keeping Jesus first is the bottom line of what I briefly want to share with you now. I want to encourage you to spend your Christmas break in such a way that you come back to me with rest, not regret.

I was a student. I know how this goes. While some of you have a very restful scene waiting for you at home, many of you don't. In particular, while a neat Christian college like Wheaton has provided you with a new level of nurture, positive peer pressure, and a buffer zone from the world, home can a place where temptation lies. For those of you who have been through this before, you know that within you are latent desires, kept in place by this more "idyllic community", but desires that will be tested and fed at home. Here is a basic list of some of the more prominent ones:

1) Lust. With more privacy, parents at work during the day, computers without monitoring, many of you (especially you guys) will face temptation to look at and spiral into the alternate underworld of pornography.
2) Immaturity with family. I think we all know the feeling of thinking that school has freed us from bad relational habits that we had at home, especially with parents, only to return home and find we are like 16 again, retreating back into the most inane arguments and patterns with them or a sibling.
3) The classic "wrong" crowd. Some of us, well, put bluntly, were party-ers. Part of choosing a Christian school was finding a place where the temptations we caved into with our home crowd would be eclipsed by solid Christian community, where holiness is actually hip. You knew that the state school would have had you in the Greek system by now, passed out on your dorm's stoop most Friday nights. By God's grace, then, you are here. But, almost before your plane lands the text messages and calls begin - and the get-togethers, and party invites, and perhaps that old relationship that had nothing but brokeness and parisitic actions about it reignites.
4) Finally, materialism. Many of you are beginning to really think about simplicity of lifestyle and moderation in your choices. But, once back at home, with a parent's credit card in hand, or even mom simply wanting to take you out for some shopping and a latte and that little adrenaline rush of buying stuff begins - and so all that commitment to self control, healthy self denial, etc, goes out the door and now you have shoes that cost as much as a small engine Japanese scooter.

My suggestion to you is quite simple. Pray that you will not want to do any of that, including all the things I did not mention. Most of these things happen not by "chance", but because you in your heart of hearts actually look forward to squeezing yourself out of the Wheaton mold after 3 months of awkwardly navigating its culture and you are plotting ways to embrace these sinful actions or attitudes. So, quite simply, stop wanting to spend your break in dissipation, broken up only by a sweet Christmas Eve service and maybe an awkward check in with the other youth groupers who also feel ashamed at what they've been doing during the day. Ahhhh...but you can't just muster this desire, can you? Indeed. It takes the miracle of grace. So, here is a list of grace-empowered, not try harder but trust Jesus more, things to take seriously:

1) Don't stop spending time in the Bible and prayer in the morning. In fact, take the extra time you have and linger in them.
2) Pray over your temptation with specificity.
3) Hang out with good kids, even if you don't feel particularly close to them. God can actually transform these friendships. He certainly wants you to have these friendships, not the ones that lead to your spiritual demise.
4) Apply what we've been learning in the Sermon of the Mount to your community there, especially your parents...and that is grace, the beauty of Jesus, and because the gospel is always the joyful path.

I think you just might be surprised at how sweet your break can be. So, as your pastor, don't regret your break. Come back to me rested up, in Jesus.

Distracting Excellence

Here we go. This is my first blog post. The former post was taken from a newsletter, so this is actually my first authorially intended blogification.

Rather than explaining why I am doing this, let me direct you to a very good explanation already in place at http://www.toddawilson.com/. Our brother TW has himself taken his thoughts from another, who probably quilted his thoughts from yet another. But, his thoughts are my thoughts. All truth is God's truth. Alas, off we go.

As we are now in the midst of the Advent season, may I suggest a principle that may seem counter intuitive for a College Church pastor, of all people? It is this: let us not be too excellent, especially now, at Advent, when the gospel is so on the line. Let me explain. I hear complaints or soft critiques of College Church all the time, especially as I ask students, who seem very akin to our theology and priorities, why they don't attend. One common answer that I receive now is: you all are too neat, tidy, even perfect. So, after feeling initially put off, a bit offended, and tempted to dig my heals in and defend my beloved body, I began to take this seriously and ponder it a bit...

Of course I realize that many of those suggestions come from a very cursory glance at us and are loaded with cultural baggage of their own. Certainly the opposite is not commendable either - bleeding heart sermons, feigned brokenness, wallowing in shallow confessions of sin, pain, and doubt, etc. all the while participating in services with built in ambiguity, mystery, and angst in the name of authenticity, mystery, and experience. But, I wonder in the effort to be undistractingly excellent, a term that is oft used in a community like ours, that we do just that - we become distracting. I wonder if there is a place to take it down a couple notches, just a couple almost so subtle that you could not so much pin it down with a measurement mindset notches, so that we stop impeding a natural and easily approachable worship service and overall cultural ethos here at College Church, and verily, even the College Group.

The issue of Advent being a time to reflect on the place of excellence has this bearing: why did Jesus even come to be God with us? Because the cosmos, humanity...we...were far from excellent. And, he came in kenosis - in the most humble, mean estate, as the carol goes. The inversion of the Son of Man, for the inversion of the created order. One descended, so the other could ascend. The logic of the incarnation dictates a certain humility, rawness, roughness to Christian life and community, then.

So, while I have no personal suggestions for what this looks like, I think I am more willing than ever to say: we need to be a bit less excellent. This is a pretty crafted place. I mean, man! Our service can be as tight as the productions the best stage companies can pull off. There is a place for that. But, I pray our tightness and excellence never actually communicates something that is not in fact true about the person and work of Jesus himself. He did come for the sinful and broken. He did come also to make things excellent, as well. But, we live in the already not yet, don't we? So, perhaps both need to be better represented in gifted, excellence loving, thoughtful, sharp, savvy churches like ours.

At the end of the day, I would hope that even with all our excellence intact, our hope would be nothing less than Jesus, the Jesus who is now glorified and more beautiful than our minds could imagine, but the Jesus who did initially come in the most mean estate.

So, be full of faith, be passionate about holiness, worship in wonder and truth...but don't be too excellent. You may forget that Jesus is Excellence, and you are not.

When the Saints Come Russian In!

Hey College Groupers--