C-R-O-S-S is for Cornell Reaches Out in Secular Seattle

Lori Cornell Preaching for those not yet in church

Lori Cornell, pastor in secular Seattle, cyber-editor of Sabbatheology (sign on at www.crossings.org), recently attended a conference called Purpose Driven Lutherans. I asked her to run what she heard through the Crossings prism and her own pastoral experience. And you will be glad that she did.

Pastor Lori speaks Crossings lingo so fluently, that I here provide a quick primer or reminder. The first half is God's diagnosis (God seeing through us) in 3 steps.
Step 1, the initial diagnosis, concerns the observable, behavioral dimension of sin.
Step 2, the advanced diagnosis, is about the internal dimension: the ill thoughts, feelings and values--the unfaith--that lie beneath the Step 1 behaviors.
Step 3, the final diagnosis, is where this dreary disease of sin ends: in expulsion, judgment and death.

In the second half comes God's treatment (God seeing us through), also in three steps, but in corresponding reverse order, remedying first step 3, then 2 then 1.
Step 4, the initial treatment, is Christ sacrificing himself on the cross to redeem us from the final diagnosis.
Step 5, the advanced treatment for the bad faith of Step 2, is the faith in Christ that Step 4 engenders.
Step 6, the final treatment, is how the Christian faith of Step 5 issues in new behaviors, just the opposite of the behaviors examined in Step 1.

The key thing is that all three dimensions of the disease are remedied, but indirectly. That is, our behavior is changed not mainly by our trying to change it, or by learning better or by being psychologically counseled to better values (all of which are good things), but by Christ dying and creating faith in us.

Now, I invite you to enjoy Pastor Lori Cornell's insights.

TM: "Purpose Driven Lutherans" already as a title calls for some playful reflection. "Driven" could sound law-ish, for example. But maybe that is simplistic. Didn't the Spirit "drive" Jesus out into the wilderness? What does drive Lutherans, do you think? Is it the Spirit? Is it the Law? Do purposes drive us? Or should they?

LC: According to The Purpose Driven Church (by Rick Warren) which was the basis for the seminar I attended, the church has the same basic purposes it was given since Jesus commissioned the apostles. They are based on the two "greats": the Great Commandment (love God with your whole being) and the Great Commission ("Go and make disciples of all nations" from Matt. 28). I think Warren would say being "purpose driven" is a matter of faith and action. "Purpose" is a matter of trusting the promises of God about Christ and acting based on the faith that comes out of that good news. (Editor's note: In the Crossings prism, that would be the advanced and final prognosis, the "new heart" and "new behavior" of steps 5 and 6.)

Here is the difficulty with this question about what drives us. In my estimation, while the Commission and the Commandment remain law, they lose their eternal threat because of God's eternal gift in Christ. They become "get to's" rather than "got to's." That is my take. But author Warren intimates that there remains an eternal necessity of being purpose-driven, otherwise God would be forced to judge us unrighteous on the final day for not saving enough souls. That sort of approach sounds like Crossings' step 3: God's final, dire, diagnosis on sinners.

TM: That sort of fear motivation is what Lutheranism is against. In fact, we teach that what is done out of fear and self-interest is not really a good work at all, and does not even have relative merit in God's view.

LC: But here's the quandry: What if our Lutheran--or more precisely, human--downfall is that we fail to take God's wrath seriously, and so fail to evangelize effectively and enthusiastically?!

TM: So fearing is bad, but also not fearing can be bad. Is fear what drives Lutherans? Or the purposes, the Great Commandment and Great Commission?

LC: What drives Lutherans? Depends on what you mean by Lutheran. If you mean ELCA-ers, I think many of us are motivated by self-preservation (or preservation of our denomination or, to sound more dignified, our "gospel-tradition"). We see that we Lutherans can hardly compete with the evangelicals and fundamentalists when it comes to attracting new worshipers, and we're afraid of what might be lost. In Step 1 form this could be interpreted as good, healthy (or is that semi-neurotic?) competition. We want to be denominationally competative. [Editor's note: Step 1 is the "initial diagnosis," concerning observable sinful behavior]

But, Step 2, what really lies under the competition is fear--fear that fails to trust the One who is trustworthy. And with the reality of diminishing numbers looming over us, we feel God-forsaken, and in our fear really are (Step 3).

TM: Sounds like we need the saving!

LC: Ironically, the only cure for this condition is the preaching of Christ to our own fearful, forsaken hearts. It's the only thing that can turn our God-forsakenness to Christ-encounter, our fear to purpose, and our unhealthy attempts to keep up with the Joneses to true evangelism.

TM: Isn't that where the irony turns the corner, fruitfully? After all, how successful can fear-motivated evangelism be, when our true goal is to draw people to the one who says "Fear not!" But if the Gospel of Jesus can relieve us of our own fear, then we really have something to share with others who fear.

LC: You asked before, What are Lutherans driven by? In confessional Lutheran terms, we are driven ("inspired" is better) by the love of God in Christ. We want it, we want to hear it, we want to share it, and we want to preserve it so others can hear it and share it fully.

For this to happen, we need to be driven in the biblical sense. The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. The Spirit also relocated Philip, first to meet the Ethiopian on the way to Gaza, and then, even more invasively, "snatched" him away to do further work all the way to Caesarea. So, yes, the Spirit (and Luke is very clear about this in Acts) is the driving force behind the church's growth.

(Curious, though, that that growth sometimes developed out of persecution. Luke is clearly communicating who's "in the driver's seat." We do not drive the Spirit; the Spirit sets the purpose and drives, even using adversity to propel us into God's future for us.)

TM: With that in mind, our fear of losing out could be turned to an advantage. For also the people that need Christ fear losing out on something: it is a pandemic in our species. If we fearers who already are the church turn not to our own clever devices, but to the Gospel, then we will really have something to share with others, as people who have "been there."

Isn't that the vision of church that you described having encountered in your seminar? A church that is "not just us, but is also for those who are not yet here with us." That reminds me of Bonhoeffer's title for Jesus Christ, "the man for others."

LC: If Christ is "the man for others" and if we in the church are the body of Christ in the world, then we are for others. The problem is that the church, when it fails to trust in Christ, becomes concupiscent. We forget that baptism has united each of us and all of us collectively with Christ. In other words, too often churches look at themselves and see their identity apart from Christ and his purposes. Our concupiscence (or "navel-gazing" as I like to call it) directs us toward ourselves. When this happens, the Gospel is lost as well (at least at our geographic location). Too often we congregations act like a health club: we receive members and then leave them to benefit or fail to benefit from their affiliation.

TM: And your solution, Pastor?

LC: The Word of Christ makes us for others when it is preached as being for us and for those not yet with us. When we come into our congregation expecting only to be personally addressed, personally comforted or inspired by Christ's love, then part of Christ is missing for us in the preaching--the part that is for others. (Maybe this is where the evangelicals have the edge on us, to their credit.)

TM: One factor is what the worshipers expect to hear when they come.

LC: The preaching of Christ is meant to inspire us to be for others. Maybe that's why Jesus wouldn't let Mary cling to him (John 20), but sent her off to tell the others the good news. Mary would just as soon have stuck around; this was Rabbouni, the man who knew her by name. But Jesus wouldn't leave it so.

TM: OK! So like our big sister, Magdalene, we in the church need to be saved from fear for evangelism. In fact we need to be saved from evangelism for evangelism, that is, from fear-based evangelism to Christ evangelism. Fear of losing out, self-preservation, are motivations so contrary to the very gospel that we should be taking to the streets, that one wonders how an evangelism so motivated could avoid being counter-productive. Although, admittedly, God is a master of using people with mixed motives. But to bring people to Christ, and not merely into the church's spiritual "health club," as you put it, would seem to require the kind of joy and love that come only when faith has cast out fear.

LC: A friend of mine once said, "If it weren't for Jesus, I would be a really good heathen." Without the Word of Christ we are all "on the outside"--we're the community still waiting for Christ, but currently without him. The truth is, none of us can believe unless we have heard God's good Word (Romans 10). Which means that Christ, by his preached Word, makes all of us Insiders. We don't get Inside without Him. And because of him, we know that Outsiders are always in his purview; he is always ready to make them insiders.

But the needs of the crowd sometimes expose the faith inadequacies of the insiders. Take for example the feeding stories: The crowd expects to be fed, the disciples expect that they can't do it (even with Jesus right next to them). The crowd expects good things from Jesus, the disciples try to distance him or protect themselves (is that what Christians do now?).

TM: So how has your parish ministry been changed by what you heard?

LC: My preaching has stretched beyond addressing the assumed stereotypically "good Lutheran" in the pew. (Or, maybe better, it addresses those in the pew without naming and embarrassing them, because of their adverse life circumstances.) I preached a couple of weeks ago using the story of Derek, an ex-con who had "found Christ." While he was in prison for possession of drugs, he had an insatiable appetite for cigarettes. So he'd pick butts up off the floor of the prison, scrape out the remains of tobacco, and then scramble to find paper that would work to roll them. He found a Gideon's Bible and started tearing out pages of Leviticus (nice thin rice paper pages, otherwise worthless in his estimation), great for cigarettes. While he rolled Leviticus he read the Gospel of John and began to know Christ.

The gist of my sermon went like this: Step 3: God-forsaken addict. Step 4: Who is Christ for? Derek. And us. Step 5: Who are we for? Whoever Christ is for: Derek. Step 6: Look for (or, if he's already at church, greet) Derek, and let him know Christ is looking for him at Calvary Lutheran Church, and has plenty more good news to share with him.

Lori Cornell