This post is for professing Christians. It’s not meant to be a stick in anybody’s eye. It’s not one more self-defeating voice of postmodern faith. It is meant as my confession, my lament, and indeed my prayer for Christianity. I welcome you to interact if this strikes a chord with you.

It has long bothered me that Christians are so insistent on being superficially happy in their worship services. I do not mean the happiness is merely superficial, but that superficially Christian worship is consistently a positive and cheerful experience. You may be listing off the alternatives in your head and think I’m somewhat crazy. After all, who wants to worship with Christians who are unhappy, or downright miserable, or even just apathetic? It is not even the joy of Christian worship that I am referring to. The thought crystallizes in my mind: it is the homogenous emotions expressed.

Where is the lament? Where is the confession? Where is the broken humility? Where is the public expression of the other emotions we feel nearly every day, week, month of our lives? If our cheerfulness is a tribute to the greatness of our God, would not our sorrow show our need for his gospel? Would not we offer a fuller theological picture, a deeper portrait of what Christianity is, if we could cry out in sorrow as well as praise? Would not our lifting up of Christ and his cross be that much more meaningful if we had first traversed the valley of confession and repentance?

I am uneasy with the unspoken yet pervasive belief that Christian worship must reflect such a small range of emotion and human experience. It is reflected when every worship song turns to clapping. It shows in the plastic smiles of worship teams. What is especially interesting to me is that I have now seen this as an issue in diverse churches that are far-ranging on the comparative scale. The hymn-singing churches do it, and so do off-the-wall churches. Big churches and little churches. It is not satisfying and it is not true to human experience in a world devastated by sin and in need of a Savior.

It is dangerous and pervasive to embrace an approach to church and worship that is true both to a sovereign, powerful God who is mighty to save and to a sinful, fallen world swirling in sin’s grip. I am convinced that sinners need real hope, and that starts with being honest about where we are. If we can’t be honest about where we are, our own hearts and the world we live in, why would anybody care what we have to say about a solution? Superficial joy is no joy at all, just a face put on and sinners see right through it. Substantial joy is real, and it expresses itself to God as both praise and penitence, happiness and sorrow, grief and gladness.

My prayer then for Christians is that we could embrace the danger of being real before God and people.  Maybe that means exuberance, or maybe it means literally crying through a song.  Perhaps it can’t be scripted.  It might look different every time.  And maybe in the end God would get glory from sinners coming humbly to him without artifice or theatrics.

We are coming into a season of change in our life and ministry. Last week I announced my resignation. It was a change that needed to happen, one that God had been leading us toward. At the decisive point, it was difficult to pull the trigger but we have a settled sense that this is what’s right for our family and the church we have been serving.

Monday morning we’re meeting with a real estate agent to put our house on the market. We spent a significant portion of the past day preparing to show the house. I have calls in to mortgage firms to get paperwork in order for our next home purchase. There is a lot of work ahead of us, but we are spinning up energy and excitement right now for the next step in our journey.

I wanted to post here now, even though I would like to write something more substantial within the next few days. My focus the past few weeks has been on what the appropriate role and activity of the church is, and fairly soon there should be an explosion of thought on this. Thank you for your patience. I welcome your continued readership and interaction.

I informed Pastor Ken and the elders last week, and I am informing you today, that God has used various means to make it clear to us that he is moving our family into a new season of ministry. I believe God has called me to be a pastor primarily involved in teaching and vision, and have a heart for seeing the church engage sinners with the gospel. To this end we have accepted an offer to candidate at York Evangelical Free Church in York, Nebraska on November 15. My time as a pastor at Gretna Community Church is coming to a close, but we look forward to worshiping with you the next three Sundays.

While serving as interim pastor in York for a year, I will also be working with the National Guard out of our new home as a chaplain recruiter. The idea is that this will be a year of transition for the church, to seek God’s face for various challenges and cast a new vision for ministry. Our hope and the hope of the church is that we will set a foundation in the next year for a fruitful long-term ministry to the town of York, which desperately needs to experience the good news of Jesus.

We want to thank you for your kindness, generosity, and love. We have never had so many dear friends, and this aspect of leaving is very difficult. Please forgive me for the failings I have had among you, and thank you for your grace as we have served here. I want you to remember one thing, from a plaque that used to hang in the church I grew up attending: only one life, ’twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.

Jon Wymer

Gretna, Nebraska

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My blog has been lagging behind as a result of “real life.” This week I probably won’t manage more than this post, but I want to take the time for something fresh. We went to York as a family this Saturday and Sunday. We had a good visit in town including both quality and quantity time together as a family. Our primary discovery was that most of the businesses open on Saturday afternoon are consignment shops. Sunday was another opportunity to preach and interview with the search committee. More to follow on that. I’m just going to type out the gist of my sermon here.

Hope Right Here

Do you struggle with church? Why do people go to church? Why do people visit church and never commit? Why do some people still have debilitating sin issues (addiction, anger, lust, divorce) even though they faithfully attend? I have seen people faithfully attend church for years, then out of the blue here is a bitter angry divorce. Or someone involved in small groups and suddenly they fall off the wagon with an addiction coming out in the open. Or a dear friend struggling with this addiction or that sin, trying to deal with it but also trying to contain it.

What is the point of church? It’s not to make creationists, complementarians, conservatives, citizens, clean people, or even church people. I’m convinced people will wander in and out of church throughout their life if they do not find hope there. Look at the pillar verse that has been used to guilt-trip people into faithful church attendance for years. Heb. 10:25a was often used in my childhood, the old King James says, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is.” Only that part of the verse is quoted, and it offers a nice self-righteous little twist there at the end “as the manner of some is.”

Take the verse in context and you get a full-orbed picture of some really good reasons to come to church. Heb. 10:23-25 says, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” “Hold fast the confession of our hope” is a call to be about truth real and eternal. “Stir up one another to love and good works” is a call to be doing the gospel not just talking about it. “Not neglecting to meet together” implies you come to church because you’re part of a team.

Why do these three things? What is the point? “Encouraging one another” is literally bringing hope into lives through the truth, task, and team. Is courage coming into your life through church? Are you finding hope there? If you have gone there for five years and don’t find hope for your life there, it seems far-fetched to imagine a sinner off the street could walk in and find any hope or courage either.

Hope Out There

How can a church offer hope right here and now, unless it has a hope in something beyond? We know our world well enough to know that hope is in short supply. A church that offers any other future than finding hope in eternity is missing the message. After going to the classic verse used to provoke church attendance, I asked what biblical encouragement is. If Christians and church are all about giving courage, what is supposed to be the encouragement?

Turn to Col. 1:3-5a; it says, “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.” “Faith in Christ Jesus” sounds a lot like truth and belief, “love that you have for all the saints” is Christians on the team. Why be about this stuff? “Because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.” Paul said we walk by faith, not by sight. This is the Christian dilemma: we live by values not readily apparent in the world around us.

Hope in Jesus

The only way we can have hope right here in our church is to have hope in something beyond right here and now. What does it all stand or fall on? Who? Jesus! If we misunderstand Jesus, we are going to miss the boat on hope anywhere let alone right here and now. You might be reading this right now and think I’m some frou-frou evangelical that’s watering down Scripture. Absolutely not! This is the heart of the gospel. Check out Col. 1:15-23.

There is hope in Jesus because he is who Scripture says he is: the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. He was God who became man to reconcile everything, whether earthly or heavenly. The peace he made was through the cross. Those who were “alienated” will become “above reproach” in Jesus. The hope of the gospel lies in the redeeming work of Jesus, not only in justification bringing sinners into God’s family but also in sanctification growing sinners into holiness. There is hope for everything! The gospel offers hope for your and my heart, our church, our community, our nation. Jesus came to reconcile and redeem and fix.

When did the church quit preaching the gospel? When did the message turn away from the God of glory committed to the point of killing his only Son to redeeming what had fallen and strayed from him? For some reason the gospel shifts, and churches quit proclaiming it. Paul knew this and he warned them: “not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard.”

Why do Christians not deal with sin? Why is church not a place where redemption takes place, for both things in heaven (salvation) and things on earth (sanctification)? Why can sinners come to church and not be offered a message even remotely resembling hope? How would our posture and witness in the world change if the world saw us as sinners being transformed by the power of God into more holy people?

The Bible has been at the center of controversy for centuries.  Nearly every type of crime (adultery, murder, theft, vandalism, slander, hate, gossip, envy, etc.) has been committed using Bible verses as justification.  Acts of incredible courage and grace have also marked people who value the Bible.  The stories we read about the past and the people we know right now may lead us to question what the Bible is and what it’s about.

Let me make a sweeping statement, then I’ll explain.  The Bible is either hallucination or hope.  You can go to other sources (TV evangelists, college professors, reporters, authors, etc.) or you can actually read the Bible.  The Bible is a large book written by many authors from many places over many years.  There is enormous potential that this book even more than others would offer us significant reasons to not take it seriously.  I’m convinced the only way to decide if the Bible is glory or goop is to consider it personally.

Here are some things the Bible teaches:

• God “breathed” the Bible into existence through various authors he inspired to write his message. 2 Pet. 1:21b says, “Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
• Because the Bible comes from God, it has great value for humanity. 2 Tim. 3:16-17 says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”
• The Bible can be mishandled in a shameful and embarrassing way that God does not approve of. 2 Tim. 2:15 says, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”
• God has given humanity access to everything they need to know about him. 2 Pet. 1:3a says, “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.”

This book called the Bible makes some claims that are either miraculous for your life, or it’s a mush of lies that should be completely disregarded or at least not given any serious thought.  Given that I take the four points above pretty seriously and I do believe the Bible, I’d like to lay out some practical stuff about the Bible:

• You gotta read it. Whether you claim the Bible is a bunch of hooey, or consider it the key to eternity, if you’re not reading it what basis do you have to even form an opinion let alone a solid conviction?  The Bible you will see me read, study, and teach from is the ESV Study Bible pictured.  Get a Bible that you can easily read, where you’re not tripping over the vocabulary.  God does not bless Bible reading as if it were some magical event.  The goal is to understand what God is saying.  Ps. 119:105 says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”  You can’t use a flashlight if you never even pick it up.
• The gospel is key. All Scripture is inspired by God, but it is not all equally important.  If you pick up a Bible for the first time and lay into the middle of Numbers, do not expect the same blessing as one of the Gospels for example.  Jesus put it this way in Matt. 22:40, “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”  This is one reason there are so many different churches and teachers, because they do not all teach the Bible by emphasizing what the Bible emphasizes.
• It’s not up to you.  When it comes to understanding God’s Word, you can’t just pick and choose what you like or what you think it means.  God actually meant something specific when he inspired human authors, and that is what we are looking for when we pick up the Bible.  Some people think they can explain Scripture however they want, regardless of what it actually meant when God breathed it in the first place.  2 Pet. 1:20 says, “…no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation.”  This is why you need to read the Bible as part of a team called church.
• You gotta do it. This is an absolute principle.  Your exposure to the Bible is nothing if it does not lead to change in your life.  The “truth” of Scripture is not truly true in your life until it starts to come into and through and out of your life.  This paragraph could easily pillar over the rest of this article because of the importance of getting it, but the principle is simple.  James 1:22 says, “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”  As he points out later in James 2:19, the demons “believe” God but they do not obey him.

I’m well aware some or all of these ideas may challenge what you believe right now.  I welcome your interaction on this article.