ABHE Session #3 – David Ireland

The Speaker is David Ireland of Christ Church in Montclair, NJ. (http://www.christchurchusa.org)

We should applaud ourselves for being involved in biblical higher education and serving the church of North America.

“A Life-Changing Conversation”
(Mat 18:1-4) At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” {2} And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, {3} and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. {4} “Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Can you imagine that the disciples had the audacity to ask this question? Jesus comes back with an illustration of a child without voting rights or legal impact. The kingdom is not for people who think in a proud, egotistical, self-serving way. It is for people who are willing to live with a sense of brokenness in their lives and depend on the Lord.

“Unless you change” – means to make the future form or content of something different than what it would be on its own. Nothing stops an organization quicker than people who think that the way you used to do things is the way you have to do them tomorrow. One person said, “The most useless are those who never change through the years.”

Deep Change is a rudimentary change that means you can’t go back to the way you were before. 3.5 years ago, he was invited to speak at a New York City church that is a major congregation. They used to drive an hour and a half to go to the services of this church, that was racially diverse. As a young Christian, he would leave with a dream that God could use them in some capacity like that. So 20+ years later, he was going to speak at that church. There were still thousands of people, but they were still singing the same songs, still with the same ministry orientation. It was like the pause button had been pressed and they were still in the 1980s. He wasn’t judgmental, but was convicted to ask the same question, “David, are you guilty of the same?” Have we stopped changing and growing? Just because there’s a measure of success in what you do, has that made you stop pursuing God for a fresh way of pursuing the gospel?

There were a lot of great things going on, but they were steeped in a past. Sometimes when we come to the Lord, we get stuck in that era and don’t even realize it. It’s like going back to your parents’ home. Would you wear the same suit you wore 30 years ago in the 70s? It wouldn’t fit.

Principle #1: We must change. The Christian community, higher education, the body of Christ, members of the local church must change. David Kinnamon’s book unChristian poses this question when he polled people aged 16-29. His three words were Christianity, Evangelical Christianity, and Born-again Christians.

1. Do you have a bad impression . . .? 38% were bad about Christianity, 49% bad about Evangelical Christians, and 35% bad of born-again Christians.
2. Do you have a neutral impression?
3. Do you have a good impression? 16% good about Christianity, 3% good about evangelical Christians, and 10% good about born-again Christians.

Why are they like this? We may perceive that this generation has too much swagger, egotism, pride. It’s not a theological or doctrine issue. We are the ones that are guilty of swagger. We talk too much about the great things we have done rather than how we have served. We brag up our success instead of presenting humility.

Why must we change? Sometimes we’re caught up in producing students who will have lasting impact, but we have not looked at our methodology and seen if we are really changing things. The creator of Betty Crocker said, “When you’re through changing, you’re through.”

We must change because times have changed. One church Father said that the gospel must always have a forwarding address. We have to deal with the society in which we live. Relevance is the ability to say the same thing in a fresh way.

The church is to engage society with Christ’s message of love. The place of change has to start in the place of prayer. Samuel Chadwick said that he was trained to preach, craft sermons that were intellectually engaging. After several years of ministry, he was in prayer (see his book The Path of Prayer) and he became convicted that he was filled with pride and blindness. So he took his pile of precious sermons and burned them. Looking at that moment of his life, revival began to break out in his church.

It’s not just enough to raise up people with homiletical skills and administrative ability. But we have to raise up people that are transformers, agents of change.

The world is not interested in smart people and is not going to be changed by rich people. It will be changed by deep people.

Principle #2: You must change. Those are fighting words. Imagine Jesus saying it to the disciples and them saying it to each other. His church formulated a “change committee.” John Connor has a book called “Leading Change”. You create a sense of urgency. Unless the leaders recognize there is a crisis, those who serve alongside won’t recognize it either.

When we hear this, we may get defensive. If we are going to see systemic change in higher education and in our institutions, it’s about how do we see ourselves? It takes someone else to see us and instruct us.

Robert Murray M’Cheyne was asked by Spurgeon, “What makes you so effective in pulpit ministry?” His answer was “Being armed by the lamps of God”, a reference to Leviticus. He would prepare his sermons by putting his face in his hands and weeping. He would preach the same way.

The institution cannot change unless the leaders are in touch with God, weeping over the student body and the staff.

When his daughter first text messaged him, he was resistant to trying to text back. He didn’t like it. His fingers were big and the keys were small. He was trained by his mother to be particular about writing, grammar, penmanship. And the texting has its own language and grammar. It took him 10 minutes to write it just perfectly. If he had taken the approach that his daughter needed to adopt a more adult-like form of communication, he would be guilty of not being willing to change to stay connected to her.

Principle #3: I must change. Change must appear when we look in the mirror. We aren’t all that we think we are. Our degrees, accolades, manuals, classes aren’t enough to make us what God wants us to be. Unless I change, I’m in a whole lot of trouble. We need outside eyes to help us see what we have gotten used to, but that really needs to be updated. I had to realize that things have changed since I started pastoral ministries 24 years ago.

More statistics from Kinnamon’s book.

Questions were asked of two groups: Young Christians aged 23-41 or young Christians aged 42+ (still young in their faith).
Do you think cohabitation is morally acceptable? 59% yes – 33% yes

Do you think gambling is morally acceptable? 58% yes – 38% yes
Do you think lusting sexually about someone else is morally acceptable? 58% yes – 35% yes
Do you think having sex outside of marriage is morally acceptable? 44% yes – 23% yes
Do you think that getting drunk is morally acceptable? 35% yes – 14% yes
Do you think same sex sexual relationships are morally acceptable? 41% yes – 14% yes

These are troubling findings, because it means that I have to start my pastoral ministries at a different starting point than I did years ago. It’s a different climate and culture today, even among the young Christian community that we serve. We have to start the conversation at a different point.

I don’t know when you got into higher education, but it’s a different group now. It’s a different society, values, and presuppositions. The way we think about doing church and higher education must change.

Sometimes we are scratching where people don’t itch. We are only scratching where we want them to itch. The John Wayne method of schooling (shoving it down their throats whether they want it or not) won’t work.

Kinnamon says that sometimes people have a negative perspective towards us because we teach one thing and live another. That throws our students off. We need to look inside and see what we will do to make necessary changes. We want to be an institution with a fresh touch of God on it, so we can be effective and relevant.